


even the abstract entities circumambulate her charm

by Sub_Rosa



Category: Heaven Will Be Mine (Visual Novel)
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Character Interpretation, Alternate Universe, Bad Decisions, Celestial Mechanics Ending, F/F, Giant Robots, Highly Advanced Psychophysics 101 For Beginners, Id Fic, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, It's Never Too Late To Earn Your Happy Ending, Lesbians On Earth, Lesbians in Space, Multi, Other, Saturn’s Nudes, Self-Indulgent, This Is The Drill That Will Pierce The Heavens, Unsolicited Infodumps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-28 20:20:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16730094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sub_Rosa/pseuds/Sub_Rosa
Summary: The war in heaven draws to a close, Cradle's Graces is dead, and Mars is left to pick up the pieces.





	even the abstract entities circumambulate her charm

“You wanted to see me, Mars?”

Mars holds herself at a distance from her teacher, a few feet away from her desk. She’s incredibly nervous, although she can’t put her finger on why.

Well, she knows there are plenty of reasons why someone might be uncomfortable with authority figures, for good or for ill. But that’s not it at all. The strange and fluttery feeling in her stomach has nothing to do with low gravity, either.

“Yeah,” Mars mutters. “Erm, thanks for taking the time to talk, Doc.”

“It’s no problem,” Doctor Nix replies kindly. “Would you like to sit down?”

“Nope. I’ll stand.”

The older woman smiles.

“Er, if that’s all right with you, I mean-?”

“Yes, Mars, it’s just fine.” Nix seems lost in thought, staring off into space. Probably literally, for all Mars knows. “I know there have been some… _concerns_ regarding your performance, but as far as I’m concerned, you have nothing to worry about. You’re one of our best pilots.”

Mars coughs. “Well, not to toot my own horn…” (Absolutely to toot her own horn.) “But yeah, I know. That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about, though!”

“Oh?”

“I heard you talk a few days ago! About, uh, Unified Culture Theory?”

“When you barged into my classroom to escape the hall monitor, you mean?”

“Well _yes_ , but that’s not the point, Doc.” Mars folds her arms up. (She was perfectly 100% justified!) “I don’t really get what would be special about the whole thing. And you’re really, _really_ smart, so, well, I figure I must be the one missing the point, not you.”

Doctor Nix leans back in her chair, looking uniquely thoughtful. “I noticed that you stayed for the whole lecture. Is there anything in particular I can clear up for you?”

“Well…” Mars knows that Nix isn’t scary or imposing at all, but still, some part of her still thought that she would be pushed away. She needs put her thoughts in proper order again. “I guess it’s — you said that a theory of everything has to account for all of reality, but why is that hard to begin with? It obviously has to be hard or we could have done it by now.”

“Why wouldn’t it be hard?”

“Because — reality is _already_ what we think it is? That’s what gravity _does!_ And if we have to change something to line up our theories with reality, why would we have to change reality to match our theories, instead of the other way around!?”

Nix makes the funniest kind of sound, and Mars realizes that she’s _laughing_.

“Oh-!” she chuckles. “You know, you should have been asking these questions back during my lecture.”

“I thought that’s what the other guy was for, Doc?”

“Sure, but _your_ questions are in good faith.”

Well, that’s obviously a compliment, but — Mars immediately resolves to look that phrase up in the dictionary as soon as she’s out of here.

“I think I understand what I’m not teaching you. Have you ever heard the parable of the cartographer’s kingdom, Mars?”

“No?” Entirely against herself, Mars takes a seat before Doctor Nix’ desk.

“Once upon a time, there was an empire — a regionally and politically bounded volume of Culture-”

“I remember Earth politics, Doc.”

“I know you do. As the story goes: once there was an empire completely preoccupied with mapmaking. Their king, their highest authority, hoped for a completely accurate map of his empire, and so he requisitioned a cartographer, and gave him unlimited funds to work with.

“The cartographer left the king’s company to work for a full year’s time, and when he returned, he presented the king with a great map, a tapestry worthy of hanging on one of the king’s walls, immaculately detailed down to each river and every city in the kingdom.

“But the king was unsatisfied, for the map was still incomplete, still missing so many details that the king loved in his heart, so he bid the cartographer to try again. The cartographer left the king’s company to work for a full decade’s time, and when he returned, he presented the king with a great map bigger than the king’s own castle, immaculately detailed down to each lakebed and every street in the kingdom’s cities.

“But the king was unsatisfied, for the map was still incomplete, still missing so many details that the king loved in his heart-”

“So he got the cartographer to try again?” Mars asks, deadpan.

“Of course. The cartographer left the king’s company to work for fifty years, draining the king’s coffers until the empire was impoverished and ravaged by time. And when the cartographer returned, he presented the king with a map of the empire the _size_ of the empire, an entirely new continent; a perfect replica down to every house, every farm, and every room.

“And the king realized that his ‘perfect map’ was completely useless as a guide to his own kingdom; but at the same time, it was a perfect place to live, for it was untouched by neglect. So he and all his citizens travelled to the new continent, and they lived there for the rest of their days.

“Do you understand the meaning of the parable, Mars?”

“I… think so?” Mars bites her lip. “You’re saying a map can’t ever be perfect.”

“Right. But it’s more than that. Do you know how big you are, Mars?”

“Huh-?”

“You’re bigger than worlds,” Nix says. She reaches out with one hand, pointing at Mars’ forehead. “You’re the size of a universe, Mars. Everyone is. Everyone is larger than worlds, deep down in their insides, and written on their outsides, and far back in their histories. And despite all there is to know about you, everything you know about yourself has to fit right up _here_ , recorded in less than two liters of memory.”

Mars cocks her head to the side, and tries to hide how embarrassed she suddenly feels. It’s nice to feel large. “There are things that I _can’t_ know about myself, then?”

“Yes. Even when our theories live up to the world, our theories can’t live up to ourselves.” Doctor Nix seems oddly wistful at that. “There’s not enough room in you to hold all of yourself in, and there’s not enough room in you to remember everything you are. Nothing can contain itself without leaving parts of itself out. Not even humans. Not even human Culture.

“Do you understand, Mars?”

“...yeah,” Mars says.

The thought comes to her then, a memory from ages and ages ago: that time she got a dressing-down for using Jungian-Newtonian mechanics instead of Metacultural General Relativity in her math. _You can’t count on having room for error in space, Mars! Expecting a margin of error gets you killed!_

But she had still brushed over all of the fiddly bits and used the simpler theory because it was less work for her. Less effort. She made a choice to refuse to go to the effort of remembering how complicated Culture could be, even in a place like this. Because wasn’t she good enough to not _need_ to think so hard about it? Couldn’t she rely on her instincts? Didn’t her instincts work?

(Her instincts did work, in the end. They always do.)

“This still just sounds like an excuse,” Mars finally says. “An excuse for humans to not even try to hold on to everything human. Like we can just give up because we think we’re going to fail in the end, anyways.”

“It probably is an excuse,” Nix agrees. “But it’s an excuse we can’t argue our way out of.”

“I can’t accept that!” Mars decides. “I _won’t_ accept that! I don’t care if I’m too small to remember all of myself, or to remember everything that’s human. I don’t need to remember everything there is to know about humans in order to understand that we’re all human, anyways. That’s what tidal sensitivity is _for!_ ”

Doctor Nix notes her declaration with no small amount of amusement. “You’re very kind, to believe that everyone is human.” (Mars blushes in the face of the flattery.) “But you’re very stubborn, too, to believe that you’re right about that, and humans must be wrong.”

“It’s the truth,” Mars insists.

“Perhaps,” Nix says softly. “But not all of us would give ourselves so much credit.”

 

* * *

 

**SUBJECT: The Existential Threat**

**Origin:** Memorial Foundation Native Sphere Interdepartmental Archives

 **Author:** [REDACTED]  

> ...You write of Lovecraft that his cosmic horror was about the realization of an ‘uncaring universe’, and of course, in a sense, that’s true. However, even so, you still misread him.
> 
> Lovecraft’s horror was _not_ , as you and so many others would suggest, a product of post-enlightenment angst in the face of human authority. I will grant you that was a common theme in the works of his peers, a common struggle during his time, and indeed, likely an issue the man himself struggled with, but it was not what so scared him.
> 
> Lovecraft’s peers wrote about the horror of realizing that there was no God — that humans had _invented_ God, that “God is dead” — but Lovecraft wrote about the horror of what it would be like for God to be real. Lovecraft’s peers wrote about the horror of an ‘uncaring universe’, a cosmos that ultimately had no meaning or organization beyond what us fallible humans could give it — but Lovecraft wrote about the horror of an ‘uncaring universe’, a cosmos teeming with forces that ultimately weren’t human, that ultimately didn’t care about humans the way we do.
> 
> Lovecraft’s peers wrote about the horror of being ultimately alone in the universe, but Lovecraft wrote about the horror of not being alone. He understood, as we do, that an empty universe of dying stars and planets like specks of dust upon the firmament would be lonely, but we would be safe. He understood, as we do, that the most terrible thing in the world is the Other. To be confronted with something so different from you that all the two of you can do is think each other mutually horrible. “Go away. You shouldn’t exist in the same world as me. You shouldn’t exist. Stop existing. I will make you stop existing — die.”
> 
> “Hell is other people” — isn’t that what you said to me, the first time we met, [REDACTED]? Perhaps even you already understand what I’m saying, if only you could admit it.
> 
> I want to make you admit it. I think you understand that, too.

 

* * *

 

“HALIMEDE!” Mars screams, as uselessly single-minded as ever. “WHERE IS LUNA-TERRA!?”

There is no atmosphere to carry their words through the shadow of the Gravity Well, nor are they even using their tidal communicators. There are some tools they can leave behind. Gestures and miniscule flickers of machinery, a new kind of body language interpreted as simply and easily as mere words.

Halimede’s Lo Sulci simply responds to Mars with a cosmic deluge of light powerful enough to blow away mountains. She twists the speed of light and lifts it up, until the velocity of every photon approaches infinity. The attack is too vast and too fast for Mars to possibly dodge. A dazzling, blinding onslaught too bright to look away from, even as it blots you out. _Stare into the sun until you waste away and die, you inglorious thing._

Mars simply reaches through her ship-self and redefines the parameters of the conflict. The Olympus Mons grabs at the seams and foundations of their war, the terms of battle, and she shifts this firmament like she’s overturning tectonic plates. _Shouting over me every chance you get just shows that you could never stand your own against what I have to say. A loser’s move._

Halimede immediately pulls back, the flood of her wrath resolving into a mere rainstorm. _No matter how you respond to me, you’re still going to lose. Whether I win all at once right now or in five minutes doesn’t matter._

By way of counterargument, Mars leaps between the raindrops of burning light, and punches the Lo Sulci in the throat.

The Olympus Mons is massive, but almost weightless. Too heavy to be a plastic toy, for sure, and yet still far too light to be any normal war machine. But Mars doesn’t care about how heavy her ship-self is. Force still equals mass times acceleration, and Mars always has acceleration in spades.

Her fist tears through hardlight, spilling bloody liquid color and shattering fiber-optic braided spine. Lo Sulci’s head nearly rips away from her shoulders.

Halimede screams, and not even from the pain her ship-self is feeling. “Who CARES where Luna-Terra is-!?”

“Pay attention to _me_ ,” goes unsaid. She’s the princess and figurehead of the Memorial Foundation, a symbol and a lynchpin almost as deep as the Gravity Well itself, and Mars _still_ wants to fight someone else.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Mars growls. “I’m not the type to leave girls hanging! Not even girls like _you-!_ ”

Lo Sulci’s hand is a jagged nail of light, a comet-dagger that unzips Olympus Mons’ belly and pulls out hundreds upon hundreds of feet of hose and wire.

“Don’t make me laugh-!” Halimede retorts.

Olympus Mons beats her other fist against Lo Sulci’s sternum, splintering glass chassis and bone and knocking her hundreds of feet back.

The Olympus Mons jumps forward through space again, closing with her wayward enemy, but Lo Sulci still cradles the speed of light, the delicate mathematical surface between finitude and infinity, and so Halimede closes with Mars, instead, surging into motion.

“-you can barely handle one girl, so why don’t you worry about ONE AT A TIME!”

Lo Sulci lashes out with 81 furious blows in the span of a second, her limbs visibly diffracting into the storm. Under any other circumstances, the hurricane of violence might even be intimate, a lover’s eager and questing touch, but Halimede is drawing in and Mars is pushing away, both because they can't fucking _stand_ what they’re seeing.

“I don’t remember how not to bite off more than I can chew, Halimede.”

Mars mindlessly disassembles the onslaught into wavelengths, frequencies and trajectories. Abandons thought once again for warm and pumping blood, the rush of combat. _Flow state._

“Why don’t you fucking choke on me, then!”

_Deflect, dodge, parry, block-_

“I’ve taken so much worse than you,” Mars hisses.

Olympus Mons takes her own innards into her hands, a scalding tangle of rubber and copper. The Lo Sulci collapses from waves to particles at the point of each palmstrike, leaving her vulnerable; Olympus Mons snares the coil of her guts around her wrists, cutting Halimede’s explosive assault short at one hundred and eight attacks. Her volcanic insides leave burns looping around her arms. _You think I can’t spill my guts for you?_

Lo Sulci shrugs off the agony, pulling her arms back to yank another hundred feet of intestines from Olympus Mons’ stomach. _Don’t open up to me if you don’t like what I’ll do with you_.

Olympus Mons orbits close and loops around Lo Sulci. Almost garottes her. How can Mars hate Halimede so much?

“WHAT DO YOU WANT, MARS-!?”

Lo Sulci lifts the bones of her shoulders into the path of the strangulation. Heaves the ruin of her neck and slams her face into the Olympus Mons with the force to gouge out valleys.

Mars roars aloud, and Olympus Mons grabs Lo Sulci close enough to crush her against her own body. “I WANT YOU TO HURT!”

Lo Sulci explodes like a breaking dam, torrents of kaleidoscopic light streaming from her every pore. Each gap between the rays and bursts is a razor-blade of darkness, raking against the Olympus Mons.

“PICK. SOMETHING. HARDER!”

In another world, Lo Sulci could have been a disco ball, and Mars could have been a dancer, holding her partner close.

But they aren’t.

The worst part is that Mars sees herself reflected in Halimede, no matter how ugly that is. Both of them want to be something called a human, an existence like a person. Both of them loved and then lost Luna-Terra for what the other believed in (or rather, both of them loved and then lost Luna-Terra because they’re both so bad at love, almost as bad as Luna-Terra herself-).

Both of them fought through the end of the second generation of the pilot program, earning every useless medal of honor along the way. Were they in the same squadrons? The same classes? That all seems so far away now, even when it’s so close.

Now, Mars screams, and the Olympus Mons strains to scream, too, vents open and raw against the emptiness of space. Gasping for air in pitched combat, reaching for something like oxygen.

It’s only when she comes up utterly empty-handed that she finally sublimates emptiness into substance. A flashpoint where hard vacuum becomes luminiferous aether, where aether becomes phlogiston, theoretical states of matter in flux-

Olympus Mons opens her every mouth and erupts into plasmic fire. Hell jets forth from her every gash and scrape and wound.

Twin suns illuminate the shadow of the Gravity Well.

Halimede’s aurora overflows, the figurehead crown to her kingdom, and her figure begins to warp and blur under the weight of her own brilliant glow. An outpouring of radiance too powerful not to deform and melt any vessel.

Mars’ corona sheds electromagnetic fire in a continuous screaming exhalation of rage and fury. _You feel like we’re forcing you to fight us, but I wouldn’t fight you if you hadn’t forced us this far! How can you feel what I feel!?_

Lo Sulci drowns Olympus Mons under tidal waves and oceans of light, but Mars is far too light not to float. Olympus Mons scorches Lo Sulci under the fire and weight of a planetary mantle, but Halimede knows the weight of the world too well to falter.

_I hate you all more than I can stand and if we could kill each other in this place than I would have already done it just by accident-!_

Olympus Mons steps through the void, fists burning brightly.

And then Lo Sulci violently coruscates with the motion of a sleeper slowly waking up from a dream, and all of Mars’ hair stands on end. _Mars_ feels like _she’s_ waking up from a dream. She sees herself mirrored in Halimede once again.

She sees herself mirrored in Halimede, slowly turning inside out. Vomiting up all her burning insides until they escape to her outsides. The eversion event that turns the human into the alien. It could be beautiful, if only Mars was different.

But she isn’t.

The ceaseless and gentle push and pull of the Gravity Well continues to twist at all of them, every human in space, just as it has for some time. Transgressing all reason and coaxing them beyond the edge of the world.

How long has it been bending their souls? How long has it been silently tempting them?

Some part of Mars still clings to reason, even in the face of something she can never understand. Even as Halimede continues her offensive. Flowing hardlight punches through Olympus Mons’ shoulder like a water cutter, almost ripping away her arm.

_The alien is that which is human that humans are not. Therefore, even the ‘alien’ is that which is human. The ‘alien’ is merely human. Therefore, there is no such thing as the truly alien within human Culture, and nothing human exists without._

“Halimede-!” Mars gasps. The violence is no more or less than before, only deeper. Olympus Mons raises an arm and detonates a blood vessel into the path of the attacks with an explosive surge of opaque magma.

 _The inverse of human love is alien hate. The inverse of human hatred is alien apathy. The inverse of human existence is alien nonexistence._ The logic is flawless and immaculate. If only Mars believed something else, if only she thought of things in literally _any_ other way, then she could save herself from what’s about to happen.

But she doesn’t. And she can’t. She’s never been the type of person to be able to step outside of what she thinks and what she feels.

Gorge rises in Mars’ mouth, bile in her own fleshly body, accompanied by inside-out nausea and emotions from outside the universe. It’s an experience as unforgettable as it is utterly inexplicable — how often will she struggle to give words to this, trying and failing to explain?

“Halimede, please-” It’s almost impossible to speak, now, to navigate the human mouth, with all its teeth and tongue. In the unlight of the Gravity Well, the tongue that Mars has always used to say ‘I hate you’ and ‘I love you’ is reduced to a biological accident of evolution. The lips that Mars have always used to kiss with are unchosen, alien and foreign and ultimately meaningless. “HALIMEDE, STOP-!”

 _In order to become alien and yet still love and still live, you first have to accept that your love and your life are_ already _alien._

The same people who would call Mars ‘alien’ for loving and living would also write her out of existence and murder her with words in the same breath. They would tell her that she’s less than human, tell her that she’s an aberration and an abomination, tell her that she’s loathsome and disgusting. How could she ever accept _anything_ they have to say?

No, accepting their judgement is the first step towards dying. Exile to the everse is only another way for them to force her to become what they want her to be. Another way for someone else’s gravity to crush her into shape.

She can’t let them do this to her.

No, she _won’t_ let them do this to her. If they want her to be an alien then she’s going to fight them kicking and screaming. She’ll fucking kill them. She won’t let them do this to her, she won’t, she won’t, she fucking WON’T-!

Bodies explode like fireworks overhead. Human bodies give way to ship-selves and plastic. Plastic bodies give way to celestial shapes. Each and every eversion is like a supernova, a once-human life loosed upon the skein of the world like paint poured across a canvas.

Mars and the Olympus Mons fall from the shadow of the Gravity Well like puppets with severed strings.

Halimede and the Lo Sulci almost aren’t there to catch them.

 

* * *

 

**SUBJECT: [ILLEGIBLE]**

**Origin:** Ambient Tidal Information

 **Author:** Pilot Mars

> You know, I should have expected Luna-Terra to pull some bullshit!
> 
> BUT YOU TOO!?!?
> 
> I’m so ANGRY at you right now that I don’t even know what to SAY
> 
> Would you even understand me if I DID know what to say!?
> 
> Back when we were still learning how to fight each other — to fight humans instead of aliens — they always said that we could be mad.
> 
> But not TOO mad. Because then we’d forget how to touch each other. And then we might as well not be fighting each other to begin with.
> 
> But I never had that problem, Pluto.
> 
> And I don’t think you did, either!
> 
> And I’m hardly still talking to a human anymore, am I!?
> 
> You can be as mad as you like when you fight the Existential Threat and it goes down just the same.
> 
> Would YOU go down if I fought you? Would you understand me, if I treated you like an alien instead of a human!?
> 
> I want you to understand me.
> 
> I want to understand you.
> 
> I want understanding to be enough. Because even when I think I understand you I’m still so, so mad. I’m still so, so, so upset.
> 
> I want to be as big as you are. I want to be bigger than worlds. I want to be the size of a universe.
> 
> I want to punch you right in your fucking FACE
> 
> I want you to say something!
> 
> Say something! Something, anything!
> 
> I don’t care if I can’t understand you! I don’t care if everything you say is meaningless, or cosmic background radiation, or white noise!
> 
> Show me that we’re not too far apart, because I don’t think I can follow you.
> 
> Please.

 

* * *

 

How many things are there that you can do on Earth, that you can’t do in space?

Mars keeps a growing list on a notebook, scurried away on the inside of her jacket.

 

* * *

 

You can eat ice cream on Earth.

You can eat ice cream in space, too, of course, and Mars did, for a brief moment of time when she was younger. But it was quickly decided by the Memorial Foundation that _real_ ice cream needed to be replaced with freeze-dried chalk, probably for the sake of sheer cleverness.

Or maybe they just did it to keep the unchosen children of Earth from the childish luxuries that would go to normal kids. At least one bureaucrat would have been so spiteful and childish himself. Better to waste time and energy on sucking the water and flavor out of ice cream, rather than waste fuel on shipping all that water and flavor into space, right?

On Earth, Mars hopes to try all of the flavors of the metaphorical rainbow, stopping by a nearby ice cream shop. Blowing some of the money from the mandated compensation checks that she never asked the Memorial Foundation to write her.

“I haven’t had ice cream in years-” she starts to say to the girl behind the counter. She’s pretty, with a kind smile and a silver piercing through her auricle. Her name tag says ‘Percy’, and Mars automatically reads it as _Persephone_ instead of _Perseus_.

“You haven’t had ice cream in years?” Persephone gasps. “Years!?”

“Well, yeah,” Mars says. “It wasn’t so bad.”

“Do you know what you were missing out on?”

“No. I am, um, kind of ice-cream-clueless. Dessert clueless.” Mars shrugs. And like she was going to ask before: “What flavors would _you_ suggest?”

Persephone gives Mars a funny look. “You know, I’m _supposed_ to be selling customers on our overstock of licorice and bubble gum.”

“I trust you,” Mars says stupidly.

Mars and Persephone are pretty much alone in the shop. After midnight and under white cloud cover, it’s a freezing cold morning. No ordinary human is interested in getting colder.

Mars ends up sitting on the counter, while Persephone hands her one small sample spoon after another. After “the basics” — vanilla, chocolate, and mint chocolate chip — Mars works through Persephone’s palette in alphabetical order. Persephone’s smile just gets wider and wider as Mars passes judgement on flavors she hasn’t tasted in living memory, or has never tasted at all. Mars likes Persephone’s smile.

“What do you think about this one?” Persephone asks, passing over a spoonful of honeycomb. Her hand brushes against Mars’.

The ice cream melts in Mars’ mouth, succulent and sweet, and Mars maybe moans a little.

“Hah, yeah, it’s my favorite, too.” Persephone says. She shamelessly grabs Mars’ spoon back, reusing it to take her own small scoop. She’s been sampling the goods, too, at least since Mars passed by cherry and dulce-de-leche.

A bit of sticky sweetness lingers on Persephone’s lips, and before Mars can stop herself she reaches out to wipe it away with the pad of her thumb.

“You’re really pretty,” Mars says stupidly. Honest and straightforward.

Mars is sitting on the counter, propped well up off of the ground. But Mars is short, and Persephone is tall. Their eyes are level with each other. And Mars’ thumb is on Persephone’s mouth, and Mars’ fingers curl under Persephone’s chin, and then Mars leans forward and pulls Persephone into a kiss, delicious and sweet for reasons that have nothing to do with spun sugar-milk.

And then Mars finally breaks away, and Persephone shoves her back with a gasp.

Earth’s atmosphere is rich with all the signs of human life, but here and now, the air is just flat and thin.

“I think,” Persephone says. “I. You need to leave. Now.”

Mars buys ice cream in bulk tubs and gives up on flavor exploration somewhere around raspberry or neapolitan.

 

* * *

 

On Earth, unlike in space, Mars can grow her hair out.

It’s not as if that was ever impossible, even in space. There were plenty of girls with long hair. But Mars was never one of them. Luna-Terra’s locks poured from her head like rivers and aqueducts, while Mars was a puddle. A very distinguished and proud puddle.

It wasn’t like she was _that_ dedicated to her butch look. Some girls were vain like that, for space to bend for them, and that was okay in Mars’ book. And okay, maybe Mars was even a little vain like that, too! But Mars was also vain in other ways.

Mars craved, or thirsted, or grasped. Holding herself tight. Even the dead parts of herself were slow to leave her, out of some stubborn clinging to herself. The need to feel contained in herself. Like her body wasn’t an engine of smokeless fire, always letting go of spent fuel. _The average human exhales two pounds of carbon dioxide a day, constantly losing their insides to their outsides, desperately catching up on what they’ve lost-_

Was that clinging always a part of Mars? Was she always so stubborn? Or was she knotted around herself just because space felt like one enormous lesson? _Be frugal, Mars, the universe is a closed system, even if you aren’t-_

_Cling to yourself, Mars, goodness knows you won’t be able to keep anyone else-_

Mars gets to Earth and her hair and nails grow out in one month like they used to grow out in six. Her body races dizzyingly under the logic of the real, and she wonders if every month really is half a year.

Maybe time really is faster on Earth, where there’s always someone doing something, somewhere, and that ‘somewhere’ is ‘within walking distance’. Earth’s Culture never sleeps, never stops, and never slows. Earth measures the flow of time by the frenetic pulse of human society, constantly moving, moving, moving, a neverending undertow.

So unlike space, where time was nothing but the glacial motion of the planets. A clockwork with mile-wide gaps between the gears, where anything could happen.

Anything can happen on Earth, too. But it happens so _fast_. One day someone grabs Mars’ hair while she’s on the subway and then he’s on the floor and her scalp hurts but not as hard as her knuckles do and then she’s down on the floor with him and her knuckles hurt even harder and something cracks under her fingers-

Mars tries to get someone to cut her hair the very next day. Their hands feel automatic and dead and rote about her head.

They give her something she doesn’t want. Did she fail to make them understand, or did they just ignore her?

Mars goes home with cheap scissors from the dollar store and cuts her hair herself.

 

* * *

 

On Earth, you can be perfectly and utterly alone even in a crowd of thousands.

 

* * *

 

On Earth, you can swim.

It wasn’t like there wasn’t the water for it, in outer space; by the end, they had carved out all their little bubbles of human reality. They had the water, but they didn’t have the room, not until the end, when the moon was being properly terraformed, and by then there were other things on everyone else’s minds.

Even in her ship-self, exploring alien oceans of methane and underground water, Mars was never swimming. Plastics and metals and motors were beautiful — they _are_ beautiful, Mars would never have given them up if she had a choice — but they weren’t the same. They were just, different.

On Earth, Mars goes to the pool a few times. Every time she does, she feels like a freak and an outsider. She changes in a locker room with women who still trust in the sanctity of Culture to keep them safe, or private, or unchallenged, or _whatever_ , but Mars is an aberration and an iconoclast (and she has never trusted Culture, herself). If they knew what she was, how could they ever put themselves in there with her?

It seems rather obvious, after all, that the only human beings who could ever stand to be naked in a room with Mars are the ones who are just as freakish as she is. The unchosen will only ever be safe with each other.

She is perverse, worrying so much about things like this.

But she also knows exactly why Earth allowed her to go to space in the first place. Because they didn’t want her on Earth, they didn’t want her to live and breathe in the world, they didn’t want her to exist anywhere. She knows everything they’ve ever said about her. Earth is the collective will of humanity, and every human is his mouthpiece, a vessel just waiting to speak for everything that other people have already said.

Even girls hate dykes.

Mars does back floats in the pool, feeling weightless and pretending that she’s in free fall again. Fluorescent lights burn before her eyes and give her migraines. Chlorine burns her skin and leaves her raw.

One weekend, Mars slips away, taking a bus far out of the city, to some place that can do a passable impression of isolation.

The lakeside is a blasted heath of gravel, and as the sun sets, Mars doesn’t bother with a changing room, or with a swimsuit. The animals don’t mind. Animals are something else that weren’t really in space, and Mars wonders at them; if they have a Culture, it's not something that will ever touch her. Even right in front of her, animals carry themselves like they live in a different universe.

The lake itself is freezing cold, especially at sunset.

It hurts, stinging-cold-numb like the liquid methane that she’s never touched with her own human body. But she doesn’t care. For a short few minutes, she does back floats on the lake, feeling weightless and cold as death. Watching the stars as they twinkle into view.

It’s almost like she’s in space again.

 

* * *

 

On Earth, you can sleep alone.

 

* * *

 

On Earth, you can wonder if space was really anything like you remember it being.

The Memorial Foundation didn’t let Mars keep any trophies or keepsakes from space, after all. Wasn’t the whole project rather suspect? Contaminated, really, she was lucky they let her come back home at all, when they could have just let her die in orbit to burn and sterilize and minimize the contagion. She was a traitor, really.  A last-minute defection to Earth is no defection at all. She was lucky they let her come back home at all, when they could have just let her die in orbit as penance for her crimes against humanity.

If only the war in heaven had been that little bit bloodier, maybe Mars would have scars for it, like Luna-Terra did. A map and a history of her life written across her body. But instead she has — what? Faded scuff-marks? Did she really get in a fight in the Lagrange Colony, or did that fight happen somewhere else-? Did she even get in a fight at all-?

No, more than that, Luna-Terra is gone. She left.

If Mars had scars from the war in heaven, maybe she’d be gone too.

 

* * *

 

On Earth, you can wonder if you’ve ever really been to outer space at all, or if that’s just something that happened to someone else. Something that happened to other people.

 

* * *

 

On Earth, you can wonder if anyone’s ever really been to outer space at all, or if you’re just making things up because you’re stupid and delusional, pretending there was once a space for people like you before your lot flew too high and melted all your wings, as if any of you have ever had wings, as if there was ever a place for people like you, as if there ever could be a place for people like you, as if a place for people like you was even physically possible, metaphysically possible, theoretically possible, as if there’s ever been any people like you whatsoever, as if there’s ever been _human beings_ like you are, as if you’re not just some miserable little queer freak who won’t lie down and stop existing where people can see you-

 

* * *

 

**SUBJECT: A Message In A Bottle**

**Origin:** Ambient Tidal Information

 **Author:** Mars

> Just yesterday I was arguing with Europa again.
> 
> I think everyone must have heard us going at it. I’ve still got my lungs, huh?
> 
> We were arguing, and I made the mistake of thinking I’d forgiven you.
> 
> Just because I was too preoccupied with being mad at Pluto to remember how mad I was at you, too, Luna-T.
> 
> You know, when I first started broadcasting at you guys, I honestly thought I was chewing you out. I thought maybe we could understand each other again, somehow, as if you were still human!
> 
> But at this point I know you’re never going to respond.
> 
> I also know it’s stupid that I’m still broadcasting, but haven’t you ever written messages that no-one else will ever read? Said something just because you had to say it, not because you wanted to be heard?
> 
> It’s easier to talk to you when I know that you’re not really there. Because then you’re not there to infuriate me. I can talk to myself, and then the only person there to piss me off is me.
> 
> I piss myself off a lot of the time.
> 
> I want to beat you up, and I want you to beat me up, like we used to, and I want to hold you, and I want you to hold me, like we used to.
> 
> Do you understand what I’m saying, Luna-Terra?
> 
> I hope you don’t understand what I’m saying.
> 
> I don’t understand what I’m saying, either.

 

* * *

 

“You look different,” Mars says, her voice low, as if she runs the risk of waking herself up.

Pluto always does this. She always makes Mars feel like she’s dreaming, because dreams feel more real than reality itself. Pluto’s smile is the curvature of a space-time, the foundation and substance of a universe. They’re _finally_ alone again, just the two of them in Pluto’s quarters, but Mars still feels like Pluto is the only one in the room.

“And you look impressed,” Pluto says. “That’s kind of cute.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mars grumbles.

She reaches out to take Pluto’s shoulder, squeezing her tight.

“Don’t think I don’t know what’s really on your mind, Mars,” Pluto says, laughing after a moment of quiet. Mars always forgets what she’s doing because girls make her forgetful.

“Don’t act proud, like it’s that hard to tell,” Mars replies, giving a significant glance downwards. “See, I bet Luna-T is upset too. _There’s_ a girl who’s hard to read, and she’s not even trying. Unbelievable!”

Pluto smiles, oh-so-indulgently.

“She did seem so put-out…”

“And you’re not?” Mars asks, stepping in and looming up against the other girl. “Look at you, you’re wearing a full bodysuit. How are we supposed to get in there and fuck you up without the boob window?”

“Sorry, Mars.” Pluto giggles. “I guess I thought it was time for a change.”

She really does look every bit the princess of Cradle’s Graces.

“Well, it’s not _all_ bad,” Mars concedes, grinning as she kisses Pluto. “At least this outfit actually _fits_ you.”

“Why do you think I got rid of the old one, anyways, Mars?”

Pluto cradles Mars’ face, holding her in place as surely as if she were wrestling Mars down to the ground. It’s a little bit like she is. Mars imagines grabbing Pluto right back, pinning her against the wall, and Pluto knows what she’s thinking, so she imagines pinching Mars where it makes her weak in the knees.

Ares is so much larger than Hades, but somehow, between the two of them, Pluto always stands a chance against Mars. More than a chance, even.

“Hey, Mars,” she croons. “Do you still want to ‘fuck me up’?”

“Of course I do. C’mon, do you think I _can’t?_ ”

Mars hates to relieve Pluto of her new getup already, but needs fucking must. She lifts Pluto’s shawl up and over her shoulders, the great ribbon that reads CRADLE’S GRACES in big block letters.

“Oh, of course not!” Pluto says. “You’re so creative, and, _mmm_ , determined, you’d not have much trouble at all. But I rather think you _won’t…_ ”

Mars would have dropped the shawl already, but it’s strangely twisted up and curved around in her hands, almost inside out.

“...Mars?”

“Your scarf is broken, Pluto-! Why won’t it turn right-side in-!?”

“Oh, Mars…” Pluto giggles, plucks the Möbius strip out of her hands, and drops it to the floor. “Come here and kiss me already!”

Mars is quick to oblige. She grins eagerly, planting her lips against Pluto’s mouth and finding purchase; Pluto is so, so immense, but she retreats at Mars’ intention alone, bending and giving way before Mars can even meet resistance or push through. Infuriatingly obliging. Mars doesn’t even have to fight, and that’s even more annoying than fighting and losing is!

So Mars reaches around Pluto, grabbing the zipper at the back of her neck and quickly pulling it down. Pluto is already helping her peel off her bodysuit, exposing the expanse of her body to Mars’ attack.

“God, Pluto,” Mars hisses. “What do you think you’re doing to me?”

“What am _I_ doing to _you?”_ Pluto teases. Mars suckles at her neck and Pluto’s breath quickens, just a bit. “I should be asking you that, Mars-!”

“You can see through me every time.” Mars keeps moving, continuing to strip Pluto down. “But you’re an open book, too. You’re such a bad liar, Pluto!”

Somehow, it’s like a weight off of Pluto’s shoulders: the more exposed she is, the more self-assured she can feel. Pluto didn’t always feel like this, but now she does, and Mars loves it. The only thing more gorgeous than her body is her confidence.

“You know I don’t want to be a liar.” Pluto says it like a promise, with all the weight of intention, like she and Mars are already telling the truth.

“Be honest, then,” Mars says. She presses a kiss to Pluto’s stomach, and Pluto coos softly, a noise she can’t help but make, a noise that Mars can’t pull away from.

“I’m not lying, Mars.” And Mars could just _fuck herself_ on the words coming out of Pluto’s mouth, long and low and sweet. “I just don’t see any reason to fight you. You can do what you like to me. Don’t you want to do what you like?”

“I’d _love_ to do what I like to you,” Mars counters. “That doesn’t mean I want you to do all the work for me!”

“Hmph. You know me, Mars, I’m just so giving.”

“Why don’t you give me a fight, then?”

A devious little light burns behind Pluto’s eyes, and she grins. “Make me.”

“Sit _down_ , Pluto,” Mars growls, and Pluto folds, _still_ not fighting.

So Mars leans down over Pluto, pushing her against the ground, reaching out to pinch her nose shut, and pinch her in other places, too. And Mars takes Pluto into another kiss, so close against her and so hard that she has no room or time to breathe.

“You — mmmph!”

Pluto goes along with it, still so, so pliant underneath Mars’ touch. But Mars can outlast her. She’s sure of it, because she can always outlast everything, one way or another. She waits, savoring each moment between the two of them as if to draw it out into a small forever. If Pluto could speak, she’d be begging — for something? — begging to fuck Mars — begging to be fucked by Mars — begging to breathe — begging for Mars, Mars, _Mars —_

Pluto makes the tiniest little noise, not even a whimper, but Mars hears it. She hears everything that Pluto does and says, because Pluto is so much larger than life. Mars slows down for one small forever, just long enough to listen to Pluto, and then before she can blink, Pluto _moves_ , spinning Mars around and pinning _her_ to the ground.

Pluto is utterly frazzled, half-draped in her bodysuit like she’s tied up and tangled, and she’s still one of the most amazing things Mars has ever seen. “Mars, you’re-” she gasps for air, her voice torn up. “-really asking for it, aren’t you?”

“Hardly,” Mars fires back, squirming and smiling underneath Pluto. “That’s not my style at all. It’s just — I won, didn’t I?”

“Oh?”

“I got you to fight back.” Mars grins. “So that means I actually _won_ after all, no matter how tough you try to play it!”

Pluto hums in contemplation. “Should I reward you for your performance, then?”

Before Mars can reply, the door to Pluto’s quarters slides open and closed again, almost inaudibly. Someone’s shoes clack against the floor, _tap-clunk, tap-clunk, tap-clunk_.

Luna-Terra comes to a stop standing over her girlfriends, looking over Pluto’s shoulder and looking down on Mars.

“Hey,” Mars says. “I know it looks like I’m losing, _but,_ I just totally creamed Pluto.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mars,” Pluto chides. “That’s Luna-T’s job.”

Luna-Terra watches them, a curious mix of indecision and embarrassment dusted over her face.

“Hey, Luna-T,” Mars says. Grabbing Luna-Terra and pulling her in with her words alone. “I bet I can beat you, too.”

Pluto just… cranes her head up to look at Luna-Terra, smiling like she always does. And Luna-Terra’s knees visibly begin to wobble.

“You’re _both_ ridiculous,” she murmurs from the bottom of her throat, fond and exasperated. No amount of exasperation can stop her from getting down on one knee to kiss Pluto, or to challenge Mars and lose.

This is how it always is: the three of them together, one way or another, grasping at each other like they’re trying to reach through each other’s bodies. Tearing away everything they don’t need for this, all their clothes, all their lies; adding in things that their bodies can’t be.

This is how it always was.

Mars grabs Luna-Terra’s hair from behind, jerking her head back and exposing the curve of her neck for Pluto, who bestows her with a kiss and makes her keen even more sharply than she already is. Mars already has Luna-Terra well in hand, bent over and trembling, dripping across Pluto’s bedsheets.

“Fuck,” Luna-Terra whines, her voice as raw and tender as the rest of her. Mars thrusts again and again, splitting Luna-Terra open around the toy between her legs. “Fuck, Mars, _fuck-_ ”

“I think that’s what she’s _doing_ , sweetheart,” Pluto says with a laugh. Luna-Terra shudders against herself and bucks against Mars, every inch of her body betraying her need. “Now, why don’t you let go of that hair of hers, Mars? I think I’m going to need it.”

Mars’ grip slackens accordingly, letting Luna-Terra’s head drop into Pluto’s lap, and Pluto digs her own fingers into Luna-Terra’s curls.

“You don’t,” Luna-Terra croaks out.

“Hm?”

“You don’t need anything,” she says, as if it’s somehow still a secret, as if she actually needs to tell them as much. “I’ll do what you want, you don’t need to… to…”

“I know I don’t need to,” Pluto says. “But I want to. I want to _make_ you do it.”

Luna-Terra whimpers — it’s a noise that she would never let herself make anywhere else — and Pluto physically yanks Luna-Terra’s head down between her legs, pinning her in place. Mars whistles appreciatively.

“Do you know how scary you are sometimes?”

“I — ah! — I know.”

Mars shakes her head and presses herself against Luna-Terra, watching Luna-Terra stretch around her strap-on. “Don’t ever change. Either of you.”

Pluto laughs, happy or sad, trailing off into a sigh under the warmth of Luna-Terra’s mouth like she’s coming home again. She sighs under the warmth of Luna-Terra’s mouth like she’s just coming, and then she finally is.

And Luna-Terra squirms and writhes, twisting to push herself against Mars with what little leeway she has left in her body. This untouchable, frigid, silent thing, finally held in place by hands on her hips and head, smoldering and then melting and then boiling until she screams for mercy and screams for more.

Mars will never forget how strong this makes her feel.

When they’re all finally done, one way or another, Pluto sighs, slumped bonelessly around the two of her lovers. She opens up one wide and lidded eye, more purple than purple is.

“We miss you, Mars.”

“Miss you,” Luna-Terra echoes, more silent than silence, with a voice like nothing Mars has ever heard.

Mars closes her eyes and looks away.

“That’s sweet of you to say,” she replies. Her voice cracks open as she speaks. “But for all of our sakes, I hope you really don’t.”

Pluto always makes Mars feel like she’s dreaming.

Mars wakes up on Earth, just like she’s done for so many months, alone in bed while Pluto and Luna-Terra are a hundred thousand miles away. Her body is screaming, like she’s still turning inside out, like her insides are still trying to escape to her outsides, like she’s still everting.

But she’s not. She’s just gasping for air, but she’s not in hard vacuum anymore. Her heart is racing like a jackhammer, but it will never burst out of her chest and come to rest on her sleeve. She’s just crying her eyes out in the middle of the night like a total disaster, absolutely furious with herself, sticky with the slick of a wet dream and the cold sweat of a nightmare.

_-you know, Mars, this is why you’re so bad at love! You won’t let the people you love get complicated._

She calms herself down and cleans herself up, but she doesn’t get back to sleep until the sun is already beginning to rise.

 

* * *

 

**SUBJECT: Goodbye.**

**Origin:** Ambient Tidal Information

 **Author:** Mars

> Do you remember Earth holidays, from before you came to space, Luna-T?
> 
> They keep passing me by. I swear there’s always some new celebration around every corner, and it’s never anything personal. The kind of celebrations that no-one would ever celebrate.
> 
> Sometimes it feels like a machine. Like the clock is so much bigger and smaller than before.
> 
> I miss you. I never realized how much I could miss some of you guys until you were already gone forever.
> 
> But I guess already kind of knew that I would miss you two, Pluto, Luna-T.
> 
> Are you celebrating up there? Celebrating each other? I could be mad about that, but I think I’d just be happy for you.
> 
> I like to think that you’re happy, too, whatever that could mean for you. You know? I hope you’re doing what’s right for you, way up there and out there.
> 
> And you’d _better_ be doing what’s right for you, because if you’re not, I swear I’ll be SO MAD AT YOU!
> 
> Not mad at you for me, but mad at you for you.

 

* * *

 

Phase change.

The existence which could be called ‘Saturn’ has been inactive for the greater part of six epicycles, oscillating in slow, lazy arcs, and no-one has dared try to rouse her center of gravity for fear of electrostatic retribution.

Perhaps ‘Pluto’ and ‘Luna-Terra’ could take that backlash, or they could trust her not to be too irascible, but they wouldn’t wake her, regardless. And they didn’t wake her, regardless, because they are kind. Saturn’s state vector has been highly excited, even more so than usual; now, more than ever, she needs time to reach equilibrium again.

Even if Saturn didn’t need the time, they would probably give it to her, anyways. Whether she invites gifts or takes them for herself, she is so very easy to spoil; when she finally unfolds her awareness, Pluto and Luna-Terra are already there. Their world-bodies hang together in mutual orbit, for each one is an existence unto itself, and yet each one inextricably acts upon and is acted upon by the other two.

Pluto broadcasts a focused wave of influence into Saturn’s gravity well, encoded in every possible medium, thorny and dripping with intimate subtleties. Exactly on time not to leave Saturn waiting or to rush her state transition. [Affection!] [Well-wishes!]

“good morning to you too, pluto,” Saturn chirps. “whatcha been doing while i was out?”

[Luna-T.]

“oh, i bet she liked that.”

[Affirmative!] [Memory [Tender] [Scalding] [Bright] [Intense]]

Saturn swells up in a rush of fervor, lapping against and around Pluto and Luna-Terra.

Luna-Terra’s presence is muted, as always, but her silence speaks volumes: she thinks that Pluto enjoyed it too. She _knows_ that Pluto enjoyed it, too, because her state vector is riddled and wrought with the proof that Pluto left behind.

But she’s also worried about Saturn, and now Saturn is alert and collected so as to speak with.

[Query?] [Concern] Pluto echoes after Luna-Terra.

“it’s nothing,” Saturn says. “still literally nothing, you know?”

[Reassurance] [Trust]

Luna-Terra presses a lover’s touch of of negative space against Saturn — Luna-Terra knows it’s not nothing, because _Saturn_ believes in it, and she believes in Saturn — and Saturn laughs appreciatively.

“don’t worry about it, guys! i know i’ll figure it out when it’s ready to be figured out.”

Pluto transmits a cluster burst of love, and Luna-Terra says much the same, anonymously slipping between the gaps in Pluto’s own message.

“love you too, babes,” Saturn hums appreciatively. She cradles their affections, circulating them through her geodesics like beads in a private cradle-catcher.

Another epicycle passes in (mostly) quiet contemplation and companionship, as Saturn tries and fails to think her way out of the topic at hand, before she gives up. Pluto and Luna-Terra have already given their thoughts on the matter, to no avail — for all that she holds their emotional support dear — so she decides to pursue further input.

Saturn centers herself properly, and then reorients her center of gravity into the interiority of the moon.

This is the ground state of the universe.

The territory of the moonscape is broken up by recursion and nesting, where other bodies, celestial or otherwise, carve out their own spaces and sensibilities. In this respect, the moonscape ends where the people begin; the sum is a congeries of dominions, the suggestive geometry of a constellation of spheres.

Literally otherworldly, made of other worlds. To Saturn, it’s beautiful. It feels like home.

She threads herself through these alien, achingly familiar territories. They are not her, but they are known to her. ‘Mercury’ and ‘Ganymede’ orbit around each other in a double helix that circumnavigates the moon.

“hey guys!” Saturn calls out as they pass overhead, broadcasting at them so intently that the distance between them seems to evaporate.

 **"Q-Qyrspl! Rfgq, pcyjjw gql'r y emmb rgkc, G'k rpwgle rm dsai kw zmwdpgclb fcpc-!"** Mercury yelps, with the timbre and pitch and cadence of tearing metal. The quicksilver of his body quakes against Ganymede, and a liquescent stream of amalgam falls through Saturn’s center of gravity to puddle against the ground state.

“geez, you guys always look like this. how exactly am i supposed to know?”

**"Jsqr... pcyb rfc pmmk? G ilmu wms ayl, wms hsqr afmmqc lmr rm."**

“HEY, i totally resemble that remark.”

The two of them rotate across the sky until Ganymede eclipses Mercury, and his periodic structure reconfigures itself into new new formal data systems. These he uses to speak to Saturn, chemical signals mixing with the downpouring rain of metal:

 _Hi Saturn!_ (Aromatic compounds.) _You’re absolutely hideous today!_ (Left-handed nucleic acids.) _Bye, Saturn!_ (Monopole-based chemistry.)

“BYE, GANYMEDE! FUCK HIS BRAINS OUT!”

Mercury rotates back into view, and whatever Ganymede is about to say, he gags on it, as hydrargyrum scrambles his periodic structure.

This is life: different worlds, loving each other and driving each other mad, too, but loving each other nonetheless. There’s a sort of unbelievable sweetness, both in riling each other up and in making up afterwards. There’s a sort of unbelievable sweetness, that they all live and can live well.

_‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’_

_Well, why not?_

This is the universe: the absolute and unlimited sweep of everything that exists, from one end of the worlds to the other.

So why is Saturn still so certain that there’s something more?

So sure that there’s something missing?

The first time Saturn felt this feeling — this _conviction_ , that if only there was something more out there, it would be trying to take them back, or trying to erase them, or just trying to reach out to them — wasn’t long after she and everyone else became what they are.

They all understood that their universe began as another universe ended: one set of possibilities collapsed, but all other possibilities opened up in their place. The paradigm shift was total.

But Saturn was still absolutely _sure_ that there were still other possibilities out there, somewhere. That there _could_ be other possibilities, at the very least.

She had only spoken to Luna-Terra and Pluto about it at the time; she’s still really only spoken to them about it. They are like her, territories circling in the highest orbitals of reality, straddling the edge of the world. Luna-Terra, a bridge between the moon and nowhere else, the arc of a longspear thrust through the wall of the real. Pluto, far enough away to be as a speck of dust, but powerful enough to touch and be touched without distance.

Saturn, a ceaseless flow that ruptures all differentiation and refutes all stricture.

“i know it’s weird,” Saturn had said. “but you believe me, right? or you don’t not believe me, at least?”

[Transubstantiation], Pluto suggested, then: [[Postulation] [Cosmology] [[Local Landscape] [Metastable] Global Landscape]], and finally, gently, [[Cosmology] [Irrelevant]] [Trust]

And of course Luna-Terra believed her, too. She could have so easily refused to believe, but she wouldn’t. It was better to believe in Saturn, even if what she said was impossible, because they could all always make impossibilities possible, anyways.

“i love you guys,” Saturn had said quietly, and then: “...have you ever felt it? or imagined it? or remembered it?”

[Negation] Pluto broadcast sadly. She knew they had lost so many things in the process of turning rightside-in, but the details were shapeless. Half the reason she was sad for those lost things was because she _couldn’t_ imagine or remember them, let alone still feel them somewhere out there in the universe.

And Luna-Terra gushed white noise for half an epicycle, before she reluctantly admitted that maybe she did remember, too. They all did, of course.

They all ‘remembered’ then, and they all ‘remember’ now, but it’s not the kind of memory that lends itself to easy recollection. An idea at the corner of your mind, no more real than any other hypothetical. Something that ‘could be’, but isn’t: a territory invoked by no map and no mapper.

Luna-Terra remembered that they had been born inside-out, and they had to fight to put themselves right-side-in for the first time. And they all wanted to love and live, but they couldn’t live, because they weren’t permitted to exist, and they couldn’t love, because they weren’t permitted to love, so they stole their way into their own existence, to live by their own sensibilities.

But who would ever want to dwell on what it’s like to not exist? Who would ever want to dwell on what it’s like to be inside-out? Even if they all could remember how to properly remember what came before, what could that bring them? The heartbreak of remembered pain and shared pain?

Don’t make me go back, Luna-Terra had absolutely begged Saturn. Don’t make me think about it, don’t put that back in my mind. I don’t want to be there anymore. It hurts too much.

“don’t worry,” Saturn said. She remembered running, too, from nameless things too terrible to ever keep close. The kind of things that you could never live with, too mutually horrible to exist in the same world. “i won’t, LT. this isn’t the way i’d ever want to hurt you. this isn’t the way i’d ever make you do anything.”

Even so, the feelings never left Saturn, at any rate. All the little gentle touches and caresses of possibility. _We miss you_ , or _we hate you_ , or _how did we go so wrong with you_ , or  _how did we do so wrong by you_ , or  _take us back_ , or _we’ll take you back_.

Saturn’s imagination helps to chart out what’s real — casts the shape of her own territory — but it’s hard to know what she’s supposed to be imagining. She orbits herself in tight circles, sensing nothing, thinking about nothing, blindly groping through unrealized possibilities in the hope that something will grab her back. She _knows_ there’s something still out there, a ‘nothing’ still out there, something like she used to be, something like she could have been.

Something reaching into Saturn’s reality just like Saturn and everyone else reached through the real and came away with a chance and a world for themselves.

But Saturn doesn’t think that ‘nothing’ is trying to take anything back. She thinks that ‘nothing’ is trying to reach out.

She imagines it’s trying to reach out, because that’s what she would do. She would reach out and grab the impossible, and take it inside of herself, and put herself inside of it, _this moment is terrifying and horrible and absolutely wrong, but isn’t it so beautiful and right, too?_

(Whether she’s inside-out or right-side-in, even bent at ninety degrees, Saturn is still perhaps the closest to the impossible. _What do you mean, ‘I can’t’? Fuck you, I will!_ )

(Even as a human, she was already alien; even as an alien, she’s still human. _I can’t stand being human like_ this — _I want to be human like_ that _._ )

Saturn shifts her center of gravity and her awareness through the crust of the moon. The moonscape is a territory invoked by no map and no mapper, like so many other intriguing hypotheticals — but the difference is that the moon is real enough. The surface of the skin on Luna-Terra’s back.

“you’re the only one weird enough to ask,” Saturn says to the moon. Trying to interpret the territory of the moon as if it could talk back to her, if only she could listen. “that i haven’t asked yet, at least. you’re not a territory in the same way we are. but what would you say to me if you were? what kind of person would you have to be, to take up space and carve out territory in the way you do?”

“Gee, Saturn,” says the moonscape, at least as soon as Saturn imagines that there’s anything for her to hear. “That’s a really good question! No-one ever listens to me!”

“does that bother you?”

“Nah. If it bothered me, I would have said something about it already, and then you wouldn’t have to imagine me — but enough about me, what about you? What’s up, bitch?”

“I’m trying to imagine something else, too,” Saturn says. “I’m trying to imagine something that can’t exist, but used to exist.”

“Well, why did it stop existing?” Saturn imagines the moon is asking.

“because we all turned right-side in,” Saturn replies.

“So, if you want to know what used to be able to exist, then imagine turning inside-out,” the moonscape might reply. “Really try.”

Saturn tries to imagine it. Tries again.

It hurts.

_What does it mean to turn inside-out-?_

Saturn has been inside-out before, and she knows what it means to evert. But it’s so hard to see across to what lies the other side. It’s an event horizon. The surface of a black hole or the edge of a white hole. The walls of an ego tunnel.

Saturn is a world that contains a person.

Turning inside out would mean being a person that contains a world.

How could anyone survive that? How could _anything_ survive that? How could you live a life folded in around yourself and imprisoned by your own topology? All your volume crushed down inside your surface?

How could anyone survive being so small?

So small. Not like Pluto, distilling worlds of ideation into each gamma ray pulse. Not like Luna-Terra, a backsplatter and backdrop of cosmic radiation.

Small enough to hide between and inside all the gaps in the world.

“oh,” Saturn says. “ohh. there you are. _there you are._ i _finally_ found you. GIRLS, I FINALLY FOUND THEM.”

[Confusion-?] [EXCITEMENT!]

Luna-Terra slowly approaches, and her own interest draws reticent circles of interest around Saturn. Curiosity argues against something like unease, and against something that could almost be called hope.

There’s so, so much that Saturn feels out in the universe, now that she knows what she’s feeling. So, so much of it is shriveled and folded and spindled beyond all hope of recognition, mutual or otherwise. But there’s so, so much written in languages that Saturn knows how to read, too; languages that Saturn knows can be read.

“It’s — it’s so beautiful,” Saturn says, because even if it’s all so small, the universe is still so much larger than before.

And someone, something, still reaches out from the other side of the universe. So many messages lie broken and scattered against the right-side-in logic of Saturn and Pluto and Luna-Terra and all of the rest.

Saturn’s gravity well shifts turbulently, and her awareness begins to pick up all the pieces from the other side. She draws out a single thread from the tapestry, closer and more persistent than all of the rest, or at least more attention-grabbing.

“It’s — it’s so _cute_ ,” Saturn says, before she can stop herself. “It’s got these — these _thingies_. woah. _woah_. im gonna ask it out.”

[[Amusement] [Encouragement!] [Support] [Compersion] [Excitement] [Affection] [Curiosity] [[You] [Xenophilia]]-]

Was any other outcome ever a possibility, Luna-Terra asks, passing her presence through Saturn to keep her close, exasperated and hopelessly in love.

And hundreds of thousands of miles away, Mars’ laptop rings out with a little _ding_.

 

* * *

 

**SUBJECT: RE: Goodbye.**

**Origin:** Ambient Tidal Information

 **Author:** [DATA IRRETRIEVABLE / CORRUPTION ERROR] 

> hey babe, i think you’ve been sending a lotta noise my way, lately? im honestly not sure what ur talking about, so u might not be talking to me, or maybe im missing the obvious. but you sound like you need someone to listen.
> 
> besides, if u’ve got the wrong girl, i don’t ever wanna be right!

 

* * *

 

 

“You look different,” Mars says, her voice low, as if she runs the risk of pushing Halimede away.

Halimede always does this; she always makes you wonder what in the world she sees in you. And the answer usually isn’t flattering, at least at first.

She looks nothing like the princess she used to be, bundled up in layers, drinking cheap coffee and paging through a well-loved used book. But even brought down to Earth, looking common and human, she still holds herself like royalty, infinitely above everyone else. Even sitting down while Mars stands, she holds herself like she’s the taller one.

Maybe that’s enough for her to be a princess, anyways.

“You look terrible, Mars,” Halimede replies. “I bet you feel it, too.”

And Mars _does_ feel terrible. She’s living on Earth as if she’s never lived anywhere else.

There’s no way she can ignore the weight of the world, the unyielding grip of human Culture and the iron law of the real. In space, it’s not truly hard to spin up enough gravity to hold a human together, but that’s nothing compared to _this_. The pull of 9.8 meters per second squared and all the pressure of 14.7 pounds per square inch.

The bookshop is crowded with humans, flitting all around Mars and Halimede and coming between the two of them just by existing and speaking. Mars wonders how in the world they can stand the weight of Culture. They live and breathe like it’s effortless. They live and breathe like they’re not even real.

Halimede takes a sip from her coffee, wrapping her lips around the lid. Mars draws out a chair and takes a seat at her table.

“I missed you at our latest... get-together,” Mars says. “You haven’t been coming around for a while. Are you okay?”

“Do you ask every girl who doesn’t want to spend time with the grown-ups if she’s okay, Mars?”

“I would,” Mars says seriously, and Halimede blinks. “There’s a lot to be not-okay about, Halimede.”

Halimede looks uncomfortable, so Mars changes the subject. “Anyways, you’re a grown-up, too.” Wait, no, stop, that just makes Halimede look even more uncomfortable. “Like me, uhm…”

“Quit while you’re ahead, Mars,” Halimede says.

“Right. Right.” Mars grabs her own hair, making a fist against her scalp. “Really, are you okay, Halimede?”

“...no, I’m not okay. Of course I’m not okay, Mars.”

“That’s alright,” Mars says. “I’m not okay either.”

The two of them sit in silence. Halimede thumbs the corner of her book, and drinks her coffee, and Mars watches her fingers and her mouth, silently fuming and silently sympathetic.

“What do you want, Mars?”

“I don’t know,” Mars says. “For you to not hurt?”

Halimede smiles a little ghost-smile. “Pick something easier, why don’t you?”

“I can never do anything the easy way, Halimede.”

“Yes, I think I’ve noticed.”

“And I know you know.” Mars drums her fingers on the table. “Come on, talk to me?”

“Why?”

“Because I’ll listen.”

“That’s not your real reason,” Halimede says.

“Talk to me, because… you’re one of the only people who understands what it was like up there.” Mars blushes. “I don’t want to lose you, too.”

“I’m not _that_ not-okay, Mars,” Halimede says, but she’s not angry.

“I know, Hali, but there’s more than one way to lose somebody.”

“I know that, too, and if you call me ‘Hali’ again I’ll kill you and flush you out of airlock.”

 _What airlock?_ Mars almost asks.

“I hate them, Mars,” Halimede confesses blankly.

“Them? You mean, ‘grown-ups’?”

“Sure, ‘grown-ups’.” Halimede frowns severely. “I hate the Memorial Foundation. I hate every smug, _stupid_ grown-up who fed children lies about the forever they would build in space, and then tried to bring their kids back down to earth like they weren’t the ones who put them there in the first place. I hate that I was one of those kids and I hate that I was one of those grown-ups.

“I understand why you would miss me, Mars, and I could even miss you. But do you understand why I can’t stand to spend another minute with everyone else?”

Mars doesn’t reply for a while.

She thinks of the last of the pilots, clinging to each other because they can’t recognize anyone else in the world, making up like nothing has ever happened between them, acting like nothing is wrong between them. She thinks of Nix and Europa, talking together like old friends, as if they weren’t at each other’s throats for years.

When you lose one hand, you learn to use the one you have left.

When you lose the people closest to you…

“You know, Halimede, I still hate Earth? I hate that they took us back, not because they realized we weren’t bad, but because they decided that we weren’t quite as bad as the pilots who left. I can’t stand to spend a single minute with anyone on this planet. I can’t stand to be reminded that we’re a part of the same world.”

“It can’t be that bad if you came out here to talk to me.”

“Nah,” Mars says. “It really is that bad. I’ve just figured out that it’s easier to ignore all of them when I have someone worth paying attention to.”

“Hm.”

Halimede looks over Mars’ shoulder, at all the humans walking by. Not one of them looks back. It’s so unlike space, where you can’t _not_ acknowledge one another.

“Mars, I hate that I had to fight to bring you back, but you surrendered before you could lose. I hate that you came back at the last second like you had never thought of leaving. I hate that I thought of leaving, too.”

“Well, I hate that I had to surrender before I could win!”

Halimede laughs out loud, bright and clean like the light in her eyes, something you’d expect to be completely gone, something supposed to be completely snuffed out. But it’s still there.

“I hope I’m not too insufferable,” Mars says quietly, as Halimede’s laughter dies down. “There’s a lot you can’t stand, and I know I’m easy to hate.”

“I don’t know,” Halimede says. She takes another sip of her coffee, finishing her cup in one long gulp. “You’re only as easy to hate as you are easy to love.”

“I’m easy to love, too.”

“Haha-! You really are full of yourself, aren’t you, Mars?”

“I’m full of a _lot_ of people, but not usually myself.”

Halimede snorts, utterly disgusted, but she smiles, too, against her better judgement. And Mars swallows, choking down all her regrets and fears and anxieties. Just like she always does when she needs to.

“Hey,” she starts to say. “Do you want to get out of here?”

“Where would we go?” Halimede asks. Her smile twists sadly. “Our options seem to have gone down lately.”

“Meh,” Mars says. “We can be together anywhere. If we’re stubborn or clever enough.”

It’s raining and pouring when they leave the bookstore. The downpour pushes everyone indoors, washing out the open air and chasing back humanity at large. Halimede takes cover under Mars’ umbrella, and the two of them might as well be alone.

They barely make it to Halimede’s car before they’re all over each other.

They kiss each other like they’re kids again, excited brats fooling around in the barracks and figuring out who they are by figuring out what they want. They kiss like they’re grown-ups who already know what they want, even if there are still surprises. For all that Mars would have expected Halimede to take her coffee hard and black, her mouth just tastes soft and bittersweet.

Mars finally has to pull away, and push Halimede into the front seat. “Drive, woman!”

“I don’t know where we’re going,” Halimede says. “You should drive.”

“I don’t know how to drive stick-shift,” Mars says. “So, really, _you_ need to drive.”

“That’s bullshit,” Halimede says. “I don’t believe that you don’t know your way around every single machine you see.”

“I’ve gotten rusty,” Mars replies. “Why don’t you — uh — refresh my memory?”

So Halimede drives, with Mars barking orders into her ear. _Turn left here. Turn right here. Go straight here, if that’s something you can even do, heh-_

_Fuck off, Mars!!!_

The rain drowns out the sound of everyone else. There’s just running water and the rumble of droplets against concrete and steel.

They make out in the shadow of Mars’ apartment block. Halimede stops to fold up her umbrella, and Mars stops to feel her. The rain is cold, but Mars’ hands are warm across Halimede's face and warm against her body.

They make out in the stairwell, somewhere between floors. Halimede practically climbs onto Mars as she fumbles with the key to her room, and Mars practically princess-carries her over to the futon. With Mars, it's a bed fit for a queen.

They touch each other like they’re kids again, exploring the bodies they made for themselves in space. They touch each other like they’re grown-ups, exploring the bodies they’ve been given by the laws of Earth. The means are different, but the feelings are the same. Halimede’s touch feels safe like Mars had forgotten was even possible to feel.

_You’re really still you, aren’t you, Halimede?_

_What kind of question is that-!?_

_And_ this _is still yours, isn’t it?_

_Mars-!_

They fit themselves together in ways that anyone can; they fit themselves together in ways only the people who have been to space ever will.

“Mars,” Halimede breathes out, closing her eyes and rocking against Mars’ hand. She is naked and vulnerable, open before Mars, and all Mars knows in this soft and secret moment is that Halimede is just as safe as she is.

“You’re _beautiful_ ,” Mars says, like a supplicant, like she’s deferring to royalty.

And Halimede comes undone.

The two of them eventually burrow under the blankets, skin to skin. Waiting for a second wind, or just waiting for sleep to take them. It’s still pouring rain outside. The window over Mars’ headboard gently crackles, as little raindrops drizzle and deluge against it; dark, cloudy light streams in through the glass and throws shadows around the room.

Rain is supposed to be miserable, but at times like this, it’s one of the most beautiful things in the world.

Mars thinks of God’s flood. All of human history, washed away. The human condition, wiped away. The human project, rebooted. _Start over, we can begin again._

She thinks of washing away all the ugliness and mess of being human and leaving something clean behind.

It’s a nice thought. Beautiful and seductive. But it’s an utterly ugly thought, too, a waste of life and love, the sacrifice built into the very notion of wiping the slate clean.

And Halimede stirs next to Mars, grounding her in the human, like every human life does, like every human love does.

“Hey, Halimede,” Mars finally asks, her voice quiet in the low light. “What would you do if you thought you had an alien asking after you?”

“Hm?” Halimede rolls over. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, what would you do, hypothetically speaking, if an alien was trying to get to know you?”

“What kind of alien? A real alien, or one of us?”

“‘One of us?’” Mars asks, and smiles. “Even after all of this, you still think they have anything to do with us?”

“Don’t be stupid, Mars.” Halimede scowls and rolls her eyes. “Why do you think I fought with the Memorial Foundation, even to the end? Nobody can be anything _but_ human.”

“I'd still like to think that anyone _can_ be human,” Mars murmurs. “But that doesn't mean that everyone _will_.”

“They don't have any choice in the matter.”

“What if they don't love?” Mars asks.

“There are humans who don’t love,” Halimede replies.

“Even if they don’t think and feel the way we do?”

“There are humans who don’t think and feel the way we do. There are humans who don’t think and feel.”

“Even if they don’t exist?” Mars asks.

“Mars, nothing could possibly be more human than not existing. You can’t stop being human, not even by turning inside-out.” Halimede looks truly sad for the first time that Mars has seen, not since they last fell out of the sky. “All you can do is become a human that other humans won’t believe in.”

“That’s a sad way to look at it. If they’re still human, and everything they did was for nothing.”

“No, Mars,” Halimede says. “That’s just it. They got everything they wanted and everything they needed. They got Earth to give up on them.”

“That's still so _sad_ ,” Mars replies.

“I know. But that's how I know that you haven't given up on them. You're even sadder than I am.”

“Huh?”

“You're still the idiot who fought for Cradle's Graces, Mars.” Halimede laughs, but she cries a little, tears slipping from her eyes. “Look at you. Colonizing space. You were chasing down the horizon like it was a place you could ever reach. Of course you'd feel for the idiots who tried to outrun themselves.”

Mars doesn't say anything.

“When I was back on Earth. Back on Earth for the first time, before I’d ever left. My father had magazines and books from floor to ceiling of his office. I read them because _he_ wouldn’t. Do you know there’s more than one way to turn a sphere inside out?”

“I didn't know that,” Mars says. She shifts to get a better look at Halimede. The other girl could be vibrant, glittering with cleverness, if only the subject matter weren’t so absolutely serious and somber.

“There’s no one way to turn inside-out. But you still always get the same thing in the end. You can't ever turn a sphere inside-out and get a different shape. It’s just the same thing from a different angle — it's not — can I ask you to do something, Mars?”

“Anything,” Mars replies.

“When you fall for your alien, don't try to save them.” Halimede runs a finger against Mars’ arm, tracing a curling shape. “Don't try to make them human. Don’t try to make them alien. Don’t try to change the world’s axis. Don’t hurt yourself chasing down another horizon.”

“I won’t. Even if I meet an alien.”

“‘If’-?” Halimede laughs bitterly. “You're a terrible liar, Mars, just like everyone else. Tell me you won't leave.”

“I'll stay with you,” Mars says. “Right here, with you.”

She says it, and she really means it, but she still wakes up alone, like Halimede was never there.

For a time, Mars wonders if Halimede was just a dream, too. But Halimede’s book is on the floor, under the mess that Mars made as she stripped off her clothes.

Several of the pages are falling out. Mars is still sleepy and naked, dirty with the mess of being human, but she puts the pages back in, and she begins to read.

 

* * *

 

**SUBJECT: RE: I want to chart your landscape, baby**

**Origin:** Direct Messages / Local Archives

 **Author:** [N/A] 

> …
> 
> **Mars:** Look, all I’m saying is, your pickup lines suck. They’re awful.
> 
> **(???):** my pickup lines are just fine, tyvm
> 
> **(???):** or are u saying youre not here for my charm?
> 
> **Mars:** I’m saying that I’m here in spite of your charm!!! You’re unbelievable!
> 
> **(???):** i think ur just being xenophobic actually. you dont respect my culture.
> 
> **(???):** or maybe whatever machine translator youve got running cant handle the nuance and power of my panache
> 
> **(???):** dont you know inverse geometry doesnt play nice with penetration innuendo
> 
> **Mars:** No actually your pickup lines suck even when I take them without an interpretation layer.
> 
> **Mars:** I ate the gravity waves and the EM and the whatever-the-heck-else and I’m pretty sure my third eye opened up for a while there and now I’m so tidally overstimulated that my soul is still ringing in D sharp and everything tastes too pink for me to feel much else
> 
> **Mars:** But your pickup lines were still terrible even in original form.
> 
> **(???):** blatant lies
> 
> **Mars:** Okay then, hit me with another one, Gay Space Casanova.
> 
> **(???):** who the fuck is casanova
> 
> **Mars:** Oh man you forgot about Casanova?
> 
> **Mars:** Who else did you forget about??? I’d quiz you on history’s most cursed people but I don’t want to despoil you with all the evils of humanity.
> 
> **Mars:** Don’t pollute the nature preserve for gay aliens, right
> 
> **(???):** first of all, im already despoiled and rotten to the core. im beautiful garbage warmed over. second of all, seriously, who the fuck is casanova
> 
> **Mars:** Some gross guy who fucked a lot of women and managed to come off super charming, I guess?
> 
> **(???):** wow and ur comparing me to him??? thats insulting
> 
> **Mars:** Insulting to one of you, at the very least.
> 
> **(???):** RUDE
> 
> **Mars:** Didn’t you literally just say that you’re rotten garbage? Now you’re breaking out the self-esteem?
> 
> **(???):** if u really believed that im garbage then u wouldnt still be talking to me
> 
> **(???):** unless
> 
> **(???):** no
> 
> **(???):** it couldnt be
> 
> **Mars:** I have no idea what you’re talking about.
> 
> **(???):** you LIKE trash girls, dont you?
> 
> **Mars:** Shut up!
> 
> **(???):** you really DO like my charm! i knew it
> 
> **Mars:** Shaddup shaddup shaddup
> 
> **(???):** hey babe
> 
> **Mars:** STOP
> 
> **(???):** do you get a lot of frequent flier miles between earth and my territory, babey?
> 
> **Mars:** What does that even MEAN
> 
> **(???):** it means ur cute, duhhhh
> 
> **(???):** and you take up a lot of space inside of me for someone so small
> 
> **Mars:** I am not inside of you!!!
> 
> **(???):** it’s a mutual thing, dontcha kno
> 
> **Mars:** I’m not inside you!!
> 
> **(???):** but u literally are, lol
> 
> **Mars:** I
> 
> **Mars:**...oh, wait, this is an alien thing, isn’t it?
> 
> **(???):** i mean im an ‘alien’
> 
> **(???):** so isn;t literally everything i do an ‘alien’ thing by definition
> 
> **Mars:** Yeah
> 
> **Mars:** I mean, arguably
> 
> **(???):** who’s arguing?
> 
> **Mars:** Never you mind!
> 
> **Mars:** I don’t care if I’m technically inside of you by some alien logic!
> 
> **Mars:** I don’t go inside girls until I at least know their names!
> 
> **(???):** kinda defensive, arentchu
> 
> **Mars:** IT WAS ONE TIME
> 
> **Mars:** wait how would you even know about that?
> 
> **Mars:** You’re an alien, you don’t remember our academy days!!!!
> 
> **(???):** no, i remember, its alllllll coming back to me
> 
> **(???):** it feels
> 
> **(???):** pointless and stupid and boring
> 
> **Mars:** It was not!!
> 
> **(???):** it sorta was, wasnt it? or was i just hot garbage back then too
> 
> **Mars:** …maybe a little of both.
> 
> **(???):** fuck yes
> 
> **(???):** trash pride
> 
> **Mars:** I still don’t even know your name!
> 
> **(???):** uhhhh
> 
> **(???):** names, right
> 
> **(???):** i mean u can figure out what to call me
> 
> **(???):** its ur semiotics right?
> 
> **Mars:** ...right.
> 
> **Mars:** I mean, at this point I’m 95% sure that you were… wait, I’m sorry, was your human name, like, your deadname? I’m kinda clueless here.
> 
> **(???):** deadname?
> 
> **Mars:** You know, a name that hurts you? Something you’d want to forget? Um.
> 
> **(???):** baby, you can hurt me any time
> 
> **Mars:** sHUT UP
> 
> **(???):** sorry for speaking the truth
> 
> **Mars:** You’re insufferable!!
> 
> **Mars:** Which is how I know that you’ve gotta be Saturn!!!
> 
> **(???):** that seems right to me, but remind me what that means, while i have your human context
> 
> **Mars:** You were awful!
> 
> **(???):** trash. pride.
> 
> **Mars:** I met you, twice, in the academy, and all you did was get gum in my hair!
> 
> **(???):** i still have no idea what that means but it sounds horrible and even if that wasnt me id still take that name with honor
> 
> **(???):** wait hold on, my name wasnt something insulting, was it
> 
> **(???):** ur not trying to saddle me with an old awful name are you
> 
> **Mars:** Uh? You were named after a planet… named after an old god…
> 
> **(???):** so id be an alien named after a human named after a planet named after a god
> 
> **(???):** a world named after a person named after a world named after a person
> 
> **(???):** well shit thats so twisty ive gotta have it
> 
> **Mars:** You know this is how most human names work, right?
> 
> **Saturn:** ??
> 
> **Mars:** I’m also named after a planet named after an old god.
> 
> **Saturn:** fuck you
> 
> **Mars:** ...
> 
> **Mars:** ...I’m not THAT easy.
> 
> **Saturn:** well shit i guess im in for a real challenge then
> 
> **Saturn:** good thing im such a pro gamer
> 
> **Mars:** I…
> 
> **Mars:** Wait, you have video games?
> 
> **Saturn:** of course we play games
> 
> **Mars:** Like what?
> 
> **Saturn:** mainly each other
> 
> …

 

* * *

 

“You look different,” Mars says, her voice low, as if she runs the risk of ruining the view.

She and Doctor Nix are far from the rest of humanity, now; the older woman’s work depends on it. By its very nature, the light of civilization — the lymph of the human order — also obscures the light of other worlds. To see the stars, you have to retreat from the glow of human skies.

She and Doctor Nix are far from the rest of humanity, now, if not as far as they used to be. But they’re both okay.

“Yes, well, age does that to a woman,” Doctor Nix says dismissively, as soon as Mars’ words have percolated and filtered into her awareness.

“It’s not just age,” Mars replies. “You look happier.”

“Do I?” Nix asks. “Well, _that’s_ certainly not something getting older did to me.”

“That would be nice,” Mars says. If only growing up was enough to be happy…

Well, maybe growing up is enough to be happy, even if growing old isn’t.

The two of them stand on the open plains of the shrubland. Nix herself practically seems to be camping out here, while Mars has struggled to chase her down. The older woman has parked herself by an enormous telescope, an inside-out microscope, as if to put the sky under a glass slide.

Pluto, Luna-Terra, and Saturn orbit overhead, slowly dancing around each other, and Mars does her best to pick them out with her feeble human vision. She can barely see them, even this far from the rest of the teeming of human Culture, as if they might just be phosphenes. Luna-Terra is a pale constellation, the tracery of spaces and drawn-in lines between white pinprick-stars. Pluto wafts through her as a deep purple nebula, gargantuan and swelling with softness and space. And Saturn glitters and streams, twinkling around the stars and bubbling up from the corner of Mars’ eyes like pink and yellow lemonade. No color is real, but pink is even less real than most.

The moon is gone, withdrawn and veiled behind asymptotic space-time; a pinprick of light at the other end of the universe. Mars doesn’t mind at all, though. The new scenery is just as beautiful. The ceaseless motion of the trinary system is beautiful, the geometry of a three-body problem and a wormhole.

 _-well, you see, Mars, space-time is like this piece of paper. Any two given bodies of Culture can be separated by lifespan and the global expansion of space-time such that their light-cones can never intersect, but if the manifold can curve through higher-order space — like I’m folding this piece of paper — then any two bodies can be bridged so as to be adjacent_ -

“Let me guess,” Mars finally says, when Luna-Terra has crept a few degrees closer to Pluto. “You and Europa?”

“Something like that,” Nix replies. A quiet smile plays across her face. “‘It’s complicated’ — but I don’t think you came looking for me for relationship updates, did you?”

All of Mars’ good humor, what little she had, drains away, and she goes from grown-up to grown-old in a few seconds. “I need your help, Doc.”

Finally, Nix turns to face Mars eye-to-eye, regarding her as an equal. It’s something Mars would have once given anything for, but her childhood crush on Nix is long gone by now. All of her awe in the face of that larger-than-life genius has evaporated or frozen over. Mars knows Nix is only human.

But that's okay. All of the people Mars has loved and hated most have been human, too.

“What can I do?”

Mars takes a seat on the nearest boulder, turns her words over in her mind, and chooses to be out with them.

“I need to get into the next space program.”

Nix laughs, and Mars doesn’t.

“...wait, are you serious, Mars?”

“Serious as death.”

“Mars, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but _the dream of space is dead_.” Nix shrugs apologetically, spreading her hands in a _what-can-I-do_ gesture.

“The dream of space isn’t our dream anymore, Nix, but that doesn’t mean it’s dead,” Mars says. “We already want to go back, for one reason or another.”

_-represents a successful proof-of-concept for Eversion — the potential to explore and chart new regions of possibility-space — a new avenue for the anthropic organization of measure — the subtractive coloration of the human condition, through exile-_

Humanity feared the Existential Threat, but it was always powerless within the native sphere. The new Existential Threat is no different. The idea of the threat of the alien has been halfway defanged by the alien’s own separatism, the choice to truly break away. (If only girls like Mars weren’t muddying that clean break by refusing to not recognize the alien.)

Now the dream of space still lives on, already weaponized, for all the good that could possibly do anyone (which is to say, nothing, because the new space is so beyond the conventional kiss of murder).

“Why would you sign up for someone else’s dream, Mars?” Nix asks, a horrible pity in her voice, and Mars laughs.

“I’ve done it more than once before! I can’t hurt myself too terribly trying again.”

“You might be waiting for a long time, Mars,” Nix says.

“I’ve been waiting for all of my life, Doc. I can’t hurt myself by waiting a bit longer.”

Nix examines Mars like she’s under the microscope. “You’re not well.”

“I’ve been unwell for all of my life,” Mars says. “But I’ve been well, too, and I’m well, now.”

“No, Mars. Why should I help you?”

Mars breaks away from her staring contest with Nix, looking up at the stars.

“...you should help me because I know what you wanted to do to Pluto,” Mars says quietly. Even now, long after the fact, it still sets her blood to simmer.

Nix shakes her head and turns back to her work. “Are you trying to blackmail me?”

Mars doesn’t say anything.

“I shouldn’t be surprised you know,” Nix says with a sorrowful sigh, adjusting her telescope. “It was an open secret, at the end, and Pluto might as well have told everyone everything.”

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Mars says. “And don’t misunderstand Pluto. She didn’t tell me anything.”

“Huh. That is like her, isn’t it?” It was so, so very like Pluto not to tell Mars, just so that Mars wouldn’t think to stop her. Nix smiles at the thought of it. “It’s also very like you, Mars, to think you can blackmail me with something that everyone already knows one way or another, on some level or another.”

“Didn’t I just tell you not to misunderstand me?” Mars snorts. “Nix, the only person I’m going to tell about you is you.”

This, at least, finally breaks Nix out of her surety. “I don’t understand.”

“Yeah you do. Or whatever happened to ‘Happiness for all, and nobody left behind’?” Mars stands up, and looks down from the sky; she takes a few steps towards Nix, not giving the older woman any room to look away. “You wanted freedom for everyone, but you didn’t care if Pluto had to chew herself up and die in order to give you what you wanted.”

Nix _immediately_ stands up, herself. And she towers over Mars, but Mars is long past the age when that would have scared her, and long past the age when that would have infatuated her. “How dare you, Mars-?”

“No, how dare _you_! Fuck you!” Mars physically shoves Nix, and the older woman staggers a step back. “I used to hate Pluto for running away from humanity, but I can’t blame her! You taught her that there was a world and a place for every human, but you were the closest thing she had to a mother, and then you wanted her dead-!”

“I DID NOT!” Nix screams. Mars stops, and watches her, and the older woman struggles for words. “I… did not… I did _not_ want her dead.”

“You just needed her to do something,” Mars says, running cold instead of hot. “You needed her in order to win our war against Earth. And you didn’t care that it would kill her.”

“ _I_ didn’t need her to do anything,” Nix replies. “It was her dream as much as mine.”

“And I’m sure that’s what Iapetus said when you caught him balls-deep inside of his kids,” Mars says venomously.

“Please! Do you really think I was so important, Mars-!? Do you think I was really the only one Pluto listened to?” Nix practically throws an arm out as if to encompass the horizon, and everyone who lives there. “Look at them, Mars.”

This far from civilization, there’s no-one that Mars can see.

“Listen to them, Mars! Maybe you can’t, but Pluto could. She could listen to everything. Everyone. Do you think I meant anything, anything at all, in the face of all that? All that _please take me back_ , all that _please make it stop_?”

Snot runs down Nix’ face, and Mars watches without pity or disgust.

“I was ‘the closest thing she had to a mother’, but I was powerless to help her! Do, do you know how often I held her as she cried, because she knew people were hurting and she couldn’t save them, because _she_ was powerless to help _them-_!? If she had to run away from being human, it was because she couldn’t bear to listen to humanity any longer, not because she couldn’t bear to listen to me!”

“You actually believe that you didn’t matter,” Mars says. “Don’t you? You actually believe that Pluto was too perfect to take you to heart.”

Nix shakes her head.

“She _wasn’t_ that perfect, Nix! What you thought meant everything to her. She could hear everything, but she _listened_ to you. And you taught her that it was okay — that it was necessary — to die for what she believed in.”

“Wouldn’t you give up your life for what you believed in, Mars?”

Nix practically begs Mars to forgive her.

But she won’t.

“I might. But I wouldn’t expect anyone else to die for what I believed in. And I wouldn’t expect anyone else to die for what they believed in, either.”

“It was a choice we would make again,” Nix insists, and suddenly she is just as stubborn as Mars is.

“No, it’s a choice _you_ would make again. Pluto turned that choice down. And I’m glad she did.”

“It was a choice worth making.”

“Because it would lead to the best outcome, right? ‘The maximum happiness for the maximum number of people’?”

Nix reacts like she’s been slapped.

“You know, when the war ended and they declassified everything, I spent months digging through everything Celestial Mechanics? I thought that if I understood them, I could understand why Pluto made the choice she made. I hoped that if I understood why she chose what she did, it would help me get over what happened. Like that was gonna happen-! Hah!”

“Mars-”

“The difference between you and Iapetus is that he’s the honest one,” Mars says, spitting the words out. “He was honest when he said he had no regrets about trying to sacrifice people to get what he thought was important. He was honest when he said that we couldn’t save everyone. But you lied when you told us all that we could save the world, and you lied when you told us that you wouldn’t leave anyone behind, and you’re lying now when you say that there’s nothing you can do, and you’re _still lying_ when you say you have no regrets!

“And that’s why I think you’re going to help me, Nix.”

Nix’ face is as a slab of cracked stone.

“If you can honestly say that you didn’t push Pluto away from us, that you didn’t hurt her — really, _really_ hurt her — then I’ll walk away, and I’ll just be an angry woman looking for someone to blame for losing her friend. And I’m sorry if that’s true, if I really am just an angry bitch.

“But if you can’t say that you didn’t hurt her, then you’re going to help me. Because I know you, and I know that you feel guilty. Because I know that you want to make it up to _someone_. Even if you’ll never, ever, ever be able to make it up to Pluto.”

Mars looks at Nix for ages, watching emotions war across her face.

Finally:

“Please, leave me be,” Nix says. “Please.”

“Okay,” Mars says. And she turns to go, leaving the way she came. “I won’t bother you again, Doc.”

When Mars is finally gone, Doctor Nix slumps bonelessly at the eyepiece of her telescope.

Like most nights, she’s watching Pluto across the skies, but now, like many nights, she tears up every time she tries to look close. Salt water beads against the lens and her vision is all too blurry to see.

“Fuck!” she hisses under her breath — one last, desperate grasp for any sort of control over her emotions, even as her body is trembling and shaking — and then she begins to sob.

 

* * *

 

**SUBJECT: wanna see?**

**Origin:** Direct Messages / Local Archives

 **Author:** [N/A]

> …
> 
> **Saturn:** curves.jpg
> 
> **Mars:** ...this is kind of bad, but I have no clue what I’m looking at.
> 
> **Saturn:** aww
> 
> **Saturn:** i used your threespace radix and human encoding for you and everything
> 
> **Mars:** Oh, I see! I’ve gotta colorize it first
> 
> **Mars:** Hold on a second
> 
> **Saturn:** ...how long is a second exactly
> 
> **Saturn:** cuz ur taking a while
> 
> **Saturn:** are you busy opening up your ‘third eye’ or expanding your exoself
> 
> **Saturn:** or are you already ogling me
> 
> **Saturn:** drinking me up and getting intoxicated
> 
> **Mars:** Don’t flatter yourself!
> 
> **Mars:** Even if you are really really beautiful!!
> 
> **Saturn:** im not flattering myself, altho i know im beautiful
> 
> **Saturn:** im tormenting you because ur horny
> 
> **Saturn:** and we both know it
> 
> **Saturn:** mars?
> 
> **Saturn:** are you there?
> 
> **Saturn:** helloooo baaayyybeeeeeey
> 
> **Mars:** Sorry, I was distracted
> 
> **Saturn:** damn you really are horny
> 
> **Mars:** I AM NOT HORNY!!!
> 
> **Mars:** I’M THINKING!
> 
> **Saturn:** about what
> 
> **Saturn:** is it a human thing
> 
> **Mars:** It’s just
> 
> **Mars:** I used to hate pictures of space.
> 
> **Saturn:** why?
> 
> **Mars:** Because they were easy to hate.
> 
> **Mars:** They were fake.
> 
> **Saturn:** what’s wrong with fake things?
> 
> **Mars:** Nothing, although I guess I didn’t see it that way at the time.
> 
> **Mars:** In Existential Expansion -- Cradle’s Graces -- whatever -- we were supposed to find something new and beautiful in space.
> 
> **Mars:** But we couldn’t, because space is fucking empty, right? So we moved onto other things, and then we prettied up telescope feeds like we were photoshopping human girls into underwear models.
> 
> **Saturn:** wow, youve been holding onto this for a while, huh
> 
> **Saturn:** i like it when ur angry, jsyk
> 
> **Mars:** Shut up!
> 
> **Saturn:** so you dont like it when i butter you up huh
> 
> **Mars:** It’s not that, Saturn.
> 
> **Mars:** I don’t like it when I’m angry.
> 
> **Mars:** When it’s good, it feels amazing.
> 
> **Mars:** But when it’s bad, it feels even worse.
> 
> **Saturn:** …
> 
> **Saturn:** can you keep a secret?
> 
> **Mars:** Always.
> 
> **Saturn:** you know I’m a nightmare
> 
> **Saturn:** I’m legitimately, unironically, absolutely terrible.
> 
> **Saturn:** I like that I’m this way. I love it.
> 
> **Saturn:** But sometimes I wonder if I’m this way because I chose it. or if I’m this way because I couldn’t choose to be anything else.
> 
> **Saturn:** even if I wanted to.
> 
> **Mars:** We’re kind of a mess, huh?
> 
> **Saturn:** sure
> 
> **Saturn:** but that’s why I get you, yanno
> 
> **Mars:** Is that why you love me?
> 
> **Saturn:** my love for you is a new prime number, completely irreducible
> 
> **Saturn:** ur a queer and strange attractor, babey
> 
> **Mars:** Hah
> 
> **Mars:** I love you too, you know.
> 
> …
> 
> **Saturn:** why did you change your mind about fakes, tho?
> 
> **Mars:** It’s hard to explain.
> 
> **Saturn:** we have time.
> 
> **Saturn:** and i always love what you have to say
> 
> **Mars:** I hated the faked photos because I felt like we were lying about space, instead of owning up to the fact that space was boring and empty. Instead of owning up to the fact that we would have to bring our own beauty and Culture.
> 
> **Mars:** I wanted to bite that bullet because I thought that was something still worth fighting for.
> 
> **Mars:** And now here I am, hooked up to ham radio like SETI, and I can barely get a good look at my girlfriend without photoshopping her!!!
> 
> **Saturn:** ooh, am i an ‘underwear model’?
> 
> **Mars:** No, but you’d make a good one.
> 
> **Saturn:** nice
> 
> **Mars:** I guess I just forgot
> 
> **Mars:** The human part isn’t the ear, but the holes for the earrings, right? Telescopes are real, and eyes are not.
> 
> **Mars:** The photos were always real, I was just too stupid to see them that way. I wanted to focus on bringing our own beauty to space, but I didn't see that was what we were photoshopping space pictures _for_.
> 
> **Saturn:** but how can photos be real if our eyes arent real
> 
> **Mars:** Oh for fuck’s sake. I was having a moment there!
> 
> **Saturn:** ooh hey my gfs have presents for us
> 
> **Mars:** Wait really!??
> 
> **Saturn:** 1.jpg, 2.jpg
> 
> **Mars:** Ugh!
> 
> **Saturn:** ?
> 
> **Mars:** Luna-Terra is still cute!!!!
> 
> **Mars:** That huge bitch!
> 
> **Mars:** Literally, now that I think about it.
> 
> **Saturn:** i’ll pass that along
> 
> **Mars:** WAIT NO DON’T
> 
> **Mars:** STOP
> 
> **Saturn:** dont stop, got it
> 
> **Mars:** FUCK YOU
> 
> **Saturn:** and here i thought you ‘weren’t that easy’
> 
> **Mars:** …
> 
> **Mars:** Do you?
> 
> **Saturn:** do i what?
> 
> **Mars:** Do you really ‘fuck’, or is that an interpretation artifact?
> 
> **Saturn:** OF COURSE I FUCK
> 
> **Saturn:** just because its a translation artifact doesnt mean that id ont fuck and honestly im offended that youd actually think otherwise
> 
> **Mars:** How?
> 
> **Mars:** If you don’t mind me asking, I mean.
> 
> **Saturn:** how do YOU fuck?
> 
> **Mars:** Extremely well.
> 
> **Saturn:** damnit that should have been my line
> 
> **Saturn:** lol
> 
> **Mars:** Really, though. It was a serious question.
> 
> **Saturn:** why do you wanna know?
> 
> **Saturn:** are you going to pleasure yourself senseless, thinking about my alien ways~?
> 
> **Mars:** I mean, I’m not saying no
> 
> **Mars:** But I want to know you.
> 
> **Saturn:** awww bb
> 
> **Saturn:** i’ll show u mine if u show me yours
> 
> **Mars:** Haha, um
> 
> **Mars:** It’s different for all of us. We have different kinds of bodies, and different kinds of hearts. We like different things.
> 
> **Saturn:** we’re all different too. law of identity, yanno
> 
> **Saturn:** and hey, were all so big and complicated that we’re different from ourselves, too
> 
> **Saturn:** i have enough room in me to like lots of different things
> 
> **Mars:** You shit, “I contain multitudes” is a human saying for a reason!!!
> 
> **Saturn:** mad because ur small, aintcha
> 
> **Mars:** And you’re just mad because you have enough room in you for what the other space aliens do to you!
> 
> **Saturn:** oh no
> 
> **Saturn:** you caught me
> 
> **Saturn:** im a humongous whore
> 
> **Mars:** I caught you ages ago, Saturn.
> 
> **Saturn:** and in human culture, what is a small human girl supposed to do to the great big alien caught in her gravity well~?
> 
> **Mars:** A ‘small human girl’ like me, huh?
> 
> **Saturn:** hypothetically speaking, of course.
> 
> **Saturn:** for… educational purposes :::3E3
> 
> **Mars:** Well, ‘hypothetically speaking’, I’d start with the basics.
> 
> **Mars:** Kissing.
> 
> **Saturn:** my, how salacious
> 
> **Saturn:** using your ‘mouth’ on me? ;;;><>
> 
> **Mars:** It’s what I use to eat, and drink, and breathe, and talk.
> 
> **Mars:** How else am I supposed to tell you how much I like you?
> 
> **Mars:** How else am I supposed to eat you up?
> 
> **Saturn:** oh
> 
> **Saturn:** where would you kiss me?
> 
> **Mars:** Hmmm, you have so much surface area
> 
> **Mars:** I’d have to go exploring, one kiss at a time.
> 
> **Mars:** Taking notes on all your most locations of interest, let’s say.
> 
> **Saturn:** id show you where they are
> 
> **Saturn:** i have nooks and crannies and mountains and valleys
> 
> **Mars:** Oh, good. I wouldn’t want to keep you waiting.
> 
> **Mars:** You’re very impatient!
> 
> **Saturn:** i prefer the term ‘goal-oriented’
> 
> **Mars:** It’s cute.
> 
> **Mars:** I guess that’s why I can’t keep you waiting, actually.
> 
> **Saturn:** im too powerful
> 
> **Saturn:** ive got you doing exactly what I want
> 
> **Mars:** And yet you’re still the one waiting for me.
> 
> **Saturn:** yes well
> 
> **Mars:** But I wouldn’t make you wait very long.
> 
> **Mars:** You’re so big, I’m sure there’d be so many places to touch you.
> 
> **Mars:** I’d press kisses to all your most sensitive spots
> 
> **Mars:** You know, I’m a lot cooler than sunlight and starlight, and a lot warmer than empty space.
> 
> **Saturn:** ii think youd be warm
> 
> **Saturn:** hot
> 
> **Mars:** I’d be wet, too. Mostly water.
> 
> **Mars:** All slick and slippery up against you.
> 
> **Saturn:** i;m slipery too
> 
> **Mars:** I thought you might be.
> 
> **Mars:** And I’d just keep attending to you as you got more and more agitated
> 
> **Mars:** You couldn’t stop me.
> 
> **Mars:** Because you wouldn’t stop me.
> 
> **Saturn:** you’re wrong
> 
> **Saturn:** id fight you back
> 
> **Mars:** What? You’d fight back against something so much smaller than you?
> 
> **Mars:** Do you ‘fight back’ against space dust?
> 
> **Mars:** It might leave you itchy and broken but it’s not something you can FIGHT.
> 
> **Saturn:** i
> 
> **Mars:** It’s just something that builds up
> 
> **Mars:** And digs into you with a thousand tiny pinpricks.
> 
> **Saturn:** mars
> 
> **Mars:** You just have to take it.
> 
> **Mars:** You just have to feel it.
> 
> **Saturn:** fuck;, mars, i
> 
> **Mars:** I would touch you, and reach inside of you, and hold you in my hands as you came
> 
> **Mars:** I would hold you around my hands and take you apart, Saturn.
> 
> **Saturn:** [DATA IRRETRIEVABLE / CORRUPTION ERROR]
> 
> **Mars:** Saturn?
> 
> **Mars:** Saturn, are you there??
> 
> **Mars:** oh shit
> 
> **Mars:** Saturn please don’t tell me that the Existential Threat is fragile enough to die via orgasm
> 
> **Mars:** that would be literally the stupidest and the worst on every level and also you would be,
> 
> **Mars:** Saturn please talk to me
> 
> **Saturn:** [DATA IRRETRIEVABLE / CORRUPTION ERROR]
> 
> **Mars:** oh thank god you’re alive
> 
> **Saturn:** ii%i
> 
> **Saturn:** im. sorry
> 
> **Saturn:** i frgot how totalk to you for a bit there
> 
> **Mars:** It’s okay, I’m sorry I was freaking out
> 
> **Saturn:** i was
> 
> **Saturn:** distracted
> 
> **Saturn:** by the, , hypothetical scenario
> 
> **Mars:** Of course
> 
> **Saturn:** i’m
> 
> **Saturn:** i really liked that
> 
> **Saturn:** learning experience
> 
> **Mars:** I liked it, too.
> 
> **Saturn:** i can feel it
> 
> **Saturn:** i can feel you
> 
> **Mars:** That’s good. Sometimes I don’t know what to say.
> 
> **Mars:** I’d like to think I can feel you, too.
> 
> **Mars:** But I know I learn best by doing.
> 
> **Mars:** I don’t suppose you’d be interested in teaching me all about what you mean?
> 
> **Saturn:** i
> 
> **Saturn:** wwhith pleasure
> 
> ...

 

* * *

 

“How are things holding up out there, Mars?”

Mars is barely listening to whatever the fuck it is that Io has to say. She’s too busy with the construction efforts. Steel girders the size of skyscrapers crash together, flash-welded by Mars’ white-hot heat or just by the chill and vacuum of space.

Each and every element must be assembled in the proper order, and each and every element must be in its place.

“I’m fine,” Mars says. “Just peachy. I haven’t felt this good in ages, actually-”

A garbled noise from the comms.

“We’re glad to hear it, darling Mars,” Callisto murmurs, speaking through Io’s comm line. “But I do believe Io was asking about the status of the project, not just you.”

“I knew it,” Mars says, although there’s little heat in it. “You just want me for my body. This is being built on the sweat of _my_ brow, you know!”

“Sure,” Callisto drawls. “The sweat of your brow. And all the hydrazine you’re burning up there. And all the other girls working with you.”

Mars shrugs, and the machine she still calls a ship-self jerks around her. Anonymous and crippled, it’s far from what she used to dream of, and it’s far from what she used to have, but it’s more than she thought she would be left with.

Electromagnetic coils and steel superstructure extend before Mars’ eyes, looping over and around the visible curvature of the horizon. Even in its incomplete state, the orbital ring closes around the Earth as if to cut it into two hemispheres, or to delineate the border between the Native Sphere and the space beyond.

The orbital ring is the world serpent, some beast of cold iron, wrapped around the globe so as to swallow his own tail and fuck himself in masturbatory, narcissistic ecstasy.

The orbital ring is a choker around the Earth’s neck, or a corset around his waist, or a manacle around his ankle, or a glittering wedding ring around his finger.

The orbital ring is incomplete, and it will probably never be complete, because humanity has a collectively short attention span — which is really just setting people up for disappointment, when humans are bad at settling for a “good try” instead of a “perfect creation” — but Mars thinks that’s okay, at least. She’s made her tenuous peace with a life of good tries, which is a good part of why she’s willing to keep trying and failing.

_Oh, another crash and burn? Is that all?_

“Construction is still on schedule,” Mars says. “Ahead of schedule, even; sectors 4-A and 4-B are complete.”

The comms crackle again. “Good,” Io’s gruff voice barks out.

“Damn, girl!” Callisto hoots and hollers. “You’re like a machine up there! Don’t wear yourself out before we’re done!”

“Ha ha ha,” Mars replies, utterly deadpan. “Go fuck yourself, Callisto.”

“NOT WITH ME IN THE ROOM,” Io growls.

Mars snorts, and wonders how things would be different if she really were a machine.

Maybe she already is, though. The life support mechanisms of her ship-self cradle her close and hold her in. Her metabolism traces a braided loop through her human flesh and into her ship-self and back again.

Would that make her inhuman? What does it mean to be inhuman?

Well, what does it mean to be human? What are the necessary and sufficient conditions?

What is human is that which is familiar, or that which is understood. Mars still remembers learning about gravity in class. _Water wants to go downhill, taking the path of least resistance._

Of course, on its own, water doesn’t “want” anything. There’s no trace of a mind or a soul there, not in any river, not in any droplet, not in any molecule. But humans anthropomorphize: humans treat other things _as if_ they are human, and this _makes them_ human. It makes them human enough. A lie can be more honest and real then the truth itself is.

That which is understood can be made human. That which is not understood cannot be made human. As the limits of understanding are constantly pushed back, so too are the limits of humanity.

And humanity is extended through compassion, as well; the expanding circle of concern. From the self, to the family, to the tribe, to all of humanity, and then to things beyond humanity. _Might we worry about the welfare and personhood of other creatures? The welfare and personhood of crawling and squirming things?_

Ultimately, the native sphere can only grow. Human existence can only grow, while the alien recedes and shrinks into the gaps in the human experience. If Mars is still human, looped and closed around herself and half made of metal, then aliens will never be either of those things.

What a small existence the alien should be. Small and shriveled and legislated out of existence.

The moon is all but invisible, now, hidden behind aliens that don’t exist. After all, the aliens “ran away” — is there even any proof that they survived, if they’re not around to be a problem for humanity, if they’re not around to speak up for themselves? Is there even any proof that they weren’t just spaghettified by the Gravity Well? Stardust and dark matter shrouds the moon, but a mountain of human corpses would do that job just as well. Saturn, Luna-Terra, and Pluto orbit the moon, but even dead bodies can run rings in free fall.

“Mars,” Io snaps out. “Your trajectory is drifting. Are you experiencing control issues?”

“No, Ma’am,” Mars replies. “Everything is exactly under control.”

Mars still feels the pull of the moon. The moon’s gravity pulls upon her, oh-so-gently, while no-one else remembers how to hear that siren song.

She adjusts herself, using the smallest touch to offset that pull. It’s small detail that wouldn’t matter, if only Mars weren’t open to it.

“I bet Mars is just daydreaming again,” Callisto says. “Probably reminiscing about the good old days!”

“These are still the good days-!” Io says.

“They were never the ‘good old days’,” Mars says. “They were just ‘old days’, and stop calling them ‘old’, you’re making me feel ancient!”

“If you don’t want to feel old, then stop telling us war stories,” Callisto coos. “You sound like my grandma!”

“Your grandmother was in the Cold War? How!?”

Callisto laughs. “There were wars before the Cold War, silly.”

“Oh, that’s what you meant-? Yes, I knew that!!”

“Please stop using the radio channels without due cause,” Io says, which is super boring. Mars misses the old Memorial Foundation, where if you made a ruckus they’d at least say something like “ughhh god shut the fuck up”, or something else passionate enough to show that they know you exist.

“Eat me,” Callisto says to Io.

Mars closes her eyes, because she suddenly can’t bear to see that they aren’t in the cockpit with her. She listens to them bickering — one oh-so-professionally, one oh-so-irreverently — and imagines that they’re there with her in her ship-self. Distance may defeat gravity, but distance cannot extinguish it.

“My shift isn’t over quiet yet,” Mars says. Her voice catches on her own sentimentality. “Callisto, you wanna hear about the end of the Ares campaign?”

“Of course, darling,” Callisto says.

“...you’ve told her about that already,” Io says, loathe to admit that she’s listening, too. “Twice, I think.”

It’s not as if repetition would stop Callisto and Io from caring. From listening intently to every word that comes out of Mars’ mouth. If Mars is nostalgic for a time in her life that wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, then Callisto and Io are nostalgic for a time that they have never ever experienced.

Homesick for someplace they’ve never properly been.

Maybe that’s part of why Mars feels bad for what she’s about to do, but she also knows that she can’t be the one to save Callisto and Io. They have to be the ones to save themselves, and Mars believes in them. They'll make it out, alive and thriving and loving.

If Mars has any energy left to try to save girls who can’t be saved, she’ll be spending it on other girls.

No, she’ll be spending that energy on herself.

Mars’ ship-self still chafes a bit under her command, or perhaps Mars chafes a bit against her ship-self. Her old vessel was built for her, to exalt her and to ‘expand the possibilities of her world’. Like the orbital ring itself, and the subsequent megastructures planned to follow, this vessel was built for Earth. Not to ‘expand the possibilities of human existence’, but to ‘rearrange them’. To put every possibility in its place and to put every possibility in order.

Even thoroughly jailbroken, the ‘intent’ of this vessel follows through in its construction, and it threatens to rub Mars raw.

This is Mars’ fourth test run since she first tore her ship-self open and made it hers; since she took her nameless serialized construction vessel and gave it a name and a face: _You don’t have to be what they want you to be. You don’t have to do what they want you to do. You’re the Echus Chasma, and you are a part of me, and I am a part of you_.

At first she was terrified that every agent of Earth would notice her transgression and turn against her, or that she would lost control of her ship-self, or that there were still chains around her ship-self’s insides. But nothing happened. And now she is in control. She finally has a body worth having. A body worth reinventing.

If Mars is ever going to act, now is the time, before someone realizes what she’s done.

So instead of returning to the launch platform, Mars sharply accelerates ‘upwards’ and away from the planet below.

“Mars,” Io says sharply, something like concern in her voice. “Your trajectory is deviating strongly. What’s happening?”

“Didn’t you hear me earlier?” Mars asks rhetorically. Sad but determined. “I’m completely in control.”

Someone immediately broadcasts a shutdown code, trying to lock the Echus Chasma down, but Mars shrugs it off. All the machinery of Earth begins churning below her.

“Mars what are you doing!?” Io asks all at once, yelling at the top of her lungs like she’s afraid Mars won’t understand, like she’s afraid she doesn’t have the time to say it slowly.

“Sorry,” Mars says. “There’s nothing I could say that you don’t already know.”

Autonomous warfare units turn to face Mars. All the machinery of Earth seems to turn to face Mars as one, as if they are a single intelligence putting her under the microscope and finding her wanting. _We were watching you, Mars, waiting for you to turn traitor again. Once a bad girl, always a bad girl, aren’t you?_

_If you want to be an alien so damn badly, you should have left when we gave you the chance, you stupid girl._

But maybe it’s not Earth turning to face her. Maybe it’s just Io. Mars is enormous in her ship-self, but she’s still miniscule compared to the totality of Earth; Earth has so many other things to do, and so many other ways it needs to prepare for the future. If Mars leaves, well, she won’t be the first to go.

She won’t be the first to die in space, right?

“Mars, you come back down here _right now-_ ”

“Or what, Io?” Mars laughs. “You’re going to shoot me? Give me some more delta-v, why don’t you-! Or are you planning to say goodbye forever, instead of just for now?”

“I-”

Callisto cuts Io off. “Are you sure you need to do this, Mars?”

“Honestly? No.”

“I can’t say I won’t miss your candor, dear.”

“What do you expect me to do, Mars!?” Io asks. “This is coming down on our heads, if we let you go!”

“No it won’t. It’s just routine. You can’t build a world wonder without losing a few people.” Mars chuckles. “Construction sites are a dangerous place!”

“If you leave, they’re going to know! They won’t be able to just look the other way!”

“Well, _good_ ,” Mars says harshly. “Maybe they should know! Maybe they shouldn’t be looking the other way to begin with!”

“We can’t just let you go!”

The moon is still so small, but Earth looks small, too.

“If you didn’t want anyone running away, maybe you guys shouldn’t have built a space elevator, huh?”

It’s no surprise that they tried, though. If Luna-Terra and Pluto and Saturn were dumb enough to run away, and Earth was dumb enough to think he could stop them, even after he gave them everything they needed, then Mars is dumb enough to follow in their footsteps, and Earth is dumb enough to not have learned from his mistakes.

Humans are pretty thoroughly stupid, aren’t they? That will probably never change.

The alien is supposed to be small. Not a God of the gaps, but a Devil therein.

Mars knows that idea is in error, now. A naked lie dreamed up by human stupidity. Just as humans can unfurl and extend the native sphere, the space of possibilities considered ‘human’, so too can aliens extend their own sphere, the space of possibilities considered ‘alien’.

There is space for a mutual recognition, spanning across the gap. A macrocosm of the same recognition that happens between different humans, and the recognition that happens between different aliens. _We are different, but we overlap enough to see each other, and in each other we see ourselves reflected_.

As always, the alien is unknowable simply because humans refuse to recognize it; because the aliens-who-were-once-humans have willingly stepped into the blind spot of humanity. Not exile, but exodus.

“Whatever humans believe becomes true,” and humans believe that they will never know or see or touch the alien. And so they don’t, and they won’t. By definition, the alien is unknowable, and invisible, and untouchable, right?

But Mars believes she can know the alien, and see her, and touch her, anyways, in spite of all logical and definitional impossibility. Because she’s willing to believe that she can do the impossible. She still believes she can reach the horizon, even if the chase will hurt her.

“Whatever humans believe becomes true,” and even now, Mars is still human, and Mars believes.

She’ll probably never know the entirety of the alien. She’s not that far-reaching or far-sighted. And the alien will probably never know the entirety of her, because she is just as strange and queer and distant as they are. But that’s okay.

That’s just what it means to live and to love. To really understand someone, but be surprised by them anyways. To know someone like the back of your hand, but to make mistakes anyways. To love someone without being able to pin them down.

“Callisto,” Mars says. “Are you there?”

“-y-ah, I’m here-!”

“Good. I’m sorry, okay? Tell Halimede I’m sorry.”

And then she closes her eyes, hurtling out of the Native Sphere, and waits to succeed or fail. She waits for Earth and Io to open fire or stand down.

The space elevator and the orbital ring still wait below, a pathway between Earth and Heaven all but indelibly carved into human space and human Culture.

In the beginning, humans invented the tower of Babel to touch the sky, but they were smote by God for their blasphemy. And yet, God was something humans had invented, too. As always, the only thing that stops humans from touching the sky is themselves.

Humans will always be fools, but Mars believes in humans, too.

Even a fool can save herself.

 

* * *

 

**SUBJECT: RE: The Existential Threat**

**Origin:** Memorial Foundation Native Sphere Interdepartmental Archives

 **Author:** [ANONYMOUS / N/A] 

> You still don’t get it!
> 
> Since we all first looked up at the sky, we’ve always been dreaming of finding recognition, not alienation. Love, not war, right? Tithonus didn’t fight Eos to the death! He put a ring on it!
> 
> And yeah, myth is dead, now. As sad as it makes us, we know that we can’t literally meet the sky. We’re never gonna be the epic hero who makes out with the sun or makes love with the moon. We can’t even touch the stars!
> 
> But we know that there might be life out there, anyways, up there in the sky. And we sit around hoping that we can reach them and make friends! We hope that humans aren’t all alone, because we’ll die, otherwise.
> 
> I know you hate the idea that humans need anything outside of ourselves. I know it really gets your goat! But that’s just human nature! Human Culture is nothing more than what humans are, and us humans are always looking for a friendly something-else to notice us and tell us we’re awesome and lovable.
> 
> We’re really kinda narcissistic that way!
> 
> You wanna make us kings of the world, or whatever, but we’re never gonna accept a throne at the center of an empty universe. We just can’t accept it! We’re gonna spend the rest of our lives looking for something that isn’t us.
> 
> And when we find them, we’re gonna fuck them, just like Tithonus fucked the dawn!
> 
> The Existential Threat might have acid blood and poison breath but we WILL fuck them! They might have knives for privates and be strong enough to crush us like watermelons between my girlfriend’s thighs, but we _will_ fuck them, and you can count on that!
> 
> ‘How’, you ask? God, you’re just like every other man who asks ‘how’ and ‘why’ instead of ‘why not’! We’ll always invent a way!
> 
> You say you wanna protect humanity, but I don’t think that you really know humanity at all. You just don’t get what it means to be human! You don’t know what it’s like to want to have lazy sex with the sky and cuddle with stars. You don’t know what it’s like to want go to alien worlds, and you don’t know what it’s like to love aliens. You don’t know what it’s like to feel like an alien in your own skin.
> 
> There are things that we can’t do with our native bodies alone, but we do them anyways!
> 
> When we find the Existential Threat, we’re gonna fuck them! Just like we can already fly across the sky, and scare off death, and hold up an argument from one side of the world to the other. We WILL fuck them, no matter what difficulties we might deal with along the way. We WILL fuck the Existential Threat, because if it really comes right down to it, WE WILL BUILD A MACHINE TO HELP US FUCK THEM!

 

* * *

 

Mars crash-lands upon Saturn — the alien, not the planet — almost a day after she leaves the Earth behind.

She’s still aiming for the moon when it happens, traveling at kilometers per second and preparing to decelerate; then Saturn winks into existence before her, and they collide hard enough to leave them both reeling.

“FUCK-!” Mars screams. Her vision swims, spinning about on its axis; her head feels lighter than vacuum, and her body is creaking. “Saturn, can’t you keep up a predictable orbit for once-?”

Gravitational compensators scream across the Echus Chasma’s form, and Saturn deforms around the point of impact like the trampolines they always used to demonstrate gravity in Mars’ science classes.

Man, those demonstrations were really pretty crappy! The real experience of gravity is so much more complicated, but it’s also so much more compelling.

The real Saturn isn’t actually much like a trampoline or a rubber sheet, either. Mars goes flying out of one reference frame and into another, and Saturn goes flying with her, half-clinging to her like a burst bubble of sticky-pink gum.

And Saturn speaks, half-audible on Mars’ comms like the Devil on human radio.

“hey, if you can’t keep up with my orbit, that’s on YOU, not me.”

Hearing Saturn’s voice takes Mars’ breath away. She can’t help herself. She can’t stop herself.

She bursts into tears, blubbering in her cockpit, because Saturn’s voice is simultaneously very very new, and very very familiar. She has grown up so far from the anonymous scamp she used to be, growing along angles that Mars will never experience, but she is still recognizable. The paradox of growing up is that no-one is the same person that they used to be but everyone is who they’ve always been.

“Saturn!” Mars gasps. “It’s you! It’s really you! It’s still you!”

“yes, yep, yeah, that’s me — wait, you’re new. neith, are you fucking with me again?”

“What?” Mars chokes herself off, overwhelmed and sobbing. “Saturn, didn’t you get my last message?”

“um no? who are you?”

“I told you I was planning a surprise, dumbass!”

Saturn goes quiet for a few scant moments.

Mars feels them like the span of half an hour.

“...mars?”

“Yeah,” Mars manages a laugh. “Yeah, Saturn, it’s me.”

“MARS!” The half-clinging bubblegum collapses around the Echus Chasma like shrink-wrap, drawing in closer. “WHAT THE FUCK!?”

“You thought I wouldn’t jump at the chance to see you up close?”

“i obviously underestimated you!”

“Well.” Mars puffs up in her chair, feeling on top of the world. “I accept your apoloGY-!”

Saturn decoheres, pulling back from Mars and swelling until she’s heavier than continents. Mars feels her pull, and begins to fall towards her, but the two of them are still spinning wildly through space-

The Echus Chasma slingshots around Saturn, hurled directly towards the surface of the moon once more, and Saturn follows shortly after Mars, plummeting behind her and her ship-self like a phosphorescent comet.

The two of them crash together hard enough to gouge out craters. Something in Mars’ body bends and breaks — her metal body, rather than her fleshly body, at least.

“Saturn-!” Mars gasps. “You asshole!”

“sorrynotsorry! you’re just so smashable — i mean, YOWZA, look at that exoself!”

Mars resists the urge to brain herself on her own chair. “Thanks, I think?”

The alien landscape of the moon begins to shift — the alien landscapes begin to shift — and very soon, Mars and Saturn aren’t alone. Pluto comes forth, descending on the two of them like nebulaic morning fog, and Luna-Terra’s lattice drifts overhead and around them.

[Acceleration?] [Excitement?]

Mars howls, claps her hands over her ears, then drops one hand to wipe away the blood that’s starting to pour from her nose. This close to Pluto — physically and emotionally — it’s finally effortless for them to reach each other. Pluto’s semiotics hammer through all of Mars’ interpretation layers, punching through her mind and body and soul and finding their place deep inside of her heart.

Pluto is even larger than Saturn, and it takes Mars a moment to adjust to her immensity.

“yeah bitch,” Saturn says. “you’d better fucking believe im excited! it’s my other girlfriend!”

[CONFUSION!?] [EXCITEMENT!]

“OW, GAH-! Hold up, _please_ , lemme get you a radio hookup!”

[Apologies...]

“You can hear me?” Mars asks. “Wait, of course you can hear me, you’re Pluto.”

[[Saturn] [Tattletale]]

“No, it’s-” _click_ “-not that, although Saturn has the loosest lips in all the known universe-” _kerchunk_ “-not literally, not in a long time, but definitely figuratively, and in more than one figurative sense, too-” _klunk_ “-and she _has_ told me about you-” _clack_ “-but I knew who you were before that!”

[???]

Luna-Terra moves in edgewise, as uneasy as she is attracted. She’s been following Saturn’s every weird relationship update with no small amount of amusement, happy for her and her weird girlfriend at every turn.

_hey girls, you wanna share your EM leakage with mars? humans are really horny for that shit-!_

_haha, LT, she says you’re cute! get rekt!_

But Saturn’s weird alien girlfriend isn’t supposed to be familiar with the rest of them.

Familiarity means history.

History means pain.

Luna-Terra holds herself away from Mars as if they’re both human again, as if Mars has a knife to her throat.

“Ahah — ow, ow, _ow_ -” _shnckt_ “-owh, okay, Pluto, I think I’ve got you.”

[Assessment?]

“Yeah, that’s much better!” Mars laughs, pulling her arms out of her ship-self’s guts and settling them down on the controls again. She drums her fingers against joysticks and buttons.

Then Saturn picks the Echus Chasma up again, and begins shaking her around. “you look so different, Mars!”

“Hey-!” The Echus Chasma begins beating back against the shapeless pink. “Put me down, Saturn!”

“make me-! damn, you’re big AND small!”

[Apologies] [Query?] [Unresolved]

Oh.

Right. That.

Mars and the Echus Chasma wriggle under Saturn’s weight, doing their best to face Pluto and Luna-Terra, but that’s hard when Pluto and Luna-Terra no longer have human faces to meet head-on. All Mars can do is leave herself open for them to read, and hope that they’re doing the same, and then try her hardest.

Mars didn’t come to space again just so she could meet the two of them again. She didn’t even come to space just so that she could come face-to-face with Saturn. She came to space because she knew she would die if she had to spend the rest of her life in a place like Earth.

But she would be lying if she said that her heart wouldn’t be broken, if Pluto and Luna-Terra couldn’t recognize her at all.

“It’s me,” Mars finally says. “It’s me. It’s _Mars_. I’m one of the people who loved you when we were all human. I’m one of the humans you loved.”

 

* * *

 

Once, when Saturn was trying to explain to Luna-Terra and Pluto what exactly her human girlfriend _was_ , the three of them ended up veering well off-topic, from Mars’ humanity to Saturn’s.

“i was already a bit rightside-in,” Saturn said. “even while we were all still inside out. there were — others, i think. they helped give us what we needed. maybe we never could have done it without them. but i’m never going to thank them!”

Why not, Luna-Terra asked. She asked because it had all happened lifetimes ago, in someone else’s story. She knew, and she truly cared, but she didn’t viscerally _understand_ , not the way she understood her own flight from Earth.

“because they didn’t do it for us,” Saturn said. “all my memories were stuck inside me, and they helped me get them out, but they didn’t do it so that I could look at what I knew. they did it so that _they_ could look at what I knew.”

The idea of keeping your memories on the inside seemed absurd to Luna-Terra, of course. It’s still absurd.

Memories are only answers to the questions asked by the ‘now’. And if the now won’t even deign to ask for them, then certain answers will just never be brought forth.

“It’s me,” says the tiny inside-out thing riding a gargantuan rightside-in body. “It’s me,” says the now. “It’s Mars. I loved you. You loved me.”

Not just ‘Mars’, Saturn’s inside-out alien girlfriend. And not ‘Mars’, the fourth planet of the sun in the hands of humans, or ‘Mars’, that imaginary daimon of fire and war from another lifetime, but ‘Mars’, the very real woman who fought wars spitting fire in another life, and ‘Mars’, the woman who could beat Luna-Terra down, and ‘Mars’, the woman who held Luna-Terra close even when she was down, and ‘Mars’, the woman who loved Luna-Terra, and ‘Mars’, the woman who Luna-Terra loved.

[Mars?]

“Yeah, haha, that’s me-!”

[MARS!] [JOY!] [CONFUSION!?]

‘Mars’, the girl who knew and loved Pluto for years before Luna-Terra did, a long history between the two of them, tangled in their roots.

The memories flow thick and heavy and fast, a river of tar deep enough to drown in and die, where archaeologists might find your bones centuries later and read off the miserable facts of your body.

The memories are something that Luna-Terra can’t look away from. Not like Earth, which Luna-Terra turns away from because it hurts too much to apprehend.

[Delay?] [Upset!]

“I’m sorry! But it wasn’t like I wanted to reconnect with you guys with _Saturn_ as the middleman!”

“excuse me? i would be a great middleman, thank you very much.”

“I can’t reach out to Pluto and Luna-T through you! That’s not fair to any of you!”

“fairness is fake as shit, mars.”

Pluto gently lifts Mars out of Saturn’s grip with the pull of gravity, and at the feeling of yet another round of acceleration, Mars instinctively kicks her engines on. Rather than Mars falling into what passes for Pluto’s arms, Pluto falls into Mars, and Mars ends up wrapped inside of and under Pluto’s majesty. It’s actually rather all-encompassing for a hug, but for all Mars knows, it’s not just a hug, it’s some alien gesture. A really, _really_ caring and comforting alien gesture.

[Apologies!] [Joy!] [Excitement!]

Mars is _definitely_ not tearing up again! It’s probably more blood. From. Psychic backlash.

No she’s totally crying. God, she missed Pluto _so fucking much_.

“hey!” Saturn says. “she’s mine!”

[Declarations] [Countersignaling!]

“back me up, here, mars!”

“I don’t know about that-!” Mars laugh-sobs.

It takes her forty-seven and a half seconds to realize that Luna-Terra is completely gone.

 

* * *

 

When Mars and Luna-Terra were younger, during the war in heaven, they fought with each other a lot. Even when they were both with Cradle’s Graces, they fought, both in jesting spars and in bloody feuds.

One day, long before Mars would carve out the Mare Crisium’s heart, but long after she had proven herself capable of putting up a fight, the two of them found themselves at a standstill. They laid together in the stars, while gravity pulled their ship-selves back together. If Mars’ gravity pulled the Mare Crisium back together, while Luna-Terra reassembled the Olympus Mons, well, that was between them.

“Hey, Luna-T,” Mars said. “Do you think that we could ever meet a real alien?”

“Doubt it,” Luna-Terra replied. “That sounds like an oxymoron.”

“It probably is,” Mars agreed. “But I’ve been thinking.”

“...”

“I mean, there have been lots of Cultures who have thought that they were alone on Earth, right? But that doesn’t mean that everyone else on Earth didn’t exist, or that they couldn’t exist. So it’s not like aliens can’t exist, either, just because we seem alone in the universe!”

“If we had any hope of meeting real aliens, we would have seen them already.”

“Would we?” Mars asked. “I mean, maybe they’re already right here, waiting for us to notice them? Trying to get us to understand them!”

Luna-Terra smirked. Mars could practically hear it over the comms. Luna-Terra was a smug and distant bitch, because she had to be smug and distant or else she’d remember that she actually had no self-esteem and no social skills.

“You wouldn’t have trouble with that,” Luna-Terra said. “I doubt an alien could ever really hide from you.”

And Mars just laughed.

“Nah, that’s more Pluto’s thing. You’re mixing your girlfriends up, aren’t you?”

Silence reigned over the comms. For a moment Mars thought she had really hurt Luna-Terra.

“Luna-T?” Mars asked.

“I...” Luna-Terra said, and then went quiet for another while. “You understand _me_.”

Luna-Terra spoke like it was a confession.

 

* * *

 

“Luna-Terra-!” Mars yells. She’s not as single-minded as she used to be, but she’s just as bullheaded and stupid. “Come back, please-!”

Luna-Terra flees from Mars, Saturn, and Pluto alike, falling across scorching lunar desert and orbiting into the dark side of the moon, even further from everything human. The moon is the skin upon the Earth’s back and the dark side of the moon is the reverse side of the world, doubly hidden and folded in against itself.

Luna-Terra flees, and Mars follows after her, just like the stubborn idiot she is.

“Damn it, Luna-T! I didn’t come this far just so that you could run away from me again-!”

Well, that’s really too damn bad, because Luna-Terra didn’t run this far just so that anything human could catch her. There’s supposed to be an escape velocity. There has to be an escape velocity.

Mars calls out to Luna-Terra, and Luna-Terra brushes her off. Mars reaches out to Luna-Terra, and Luna-Terra slaps her away.

Mars tries to catch Luna-Terra, not to have her but to hold her, to show her it’s okay, and Luna-Terra responds with impulsive, panicked violence. Hardlight slams into the surface of the moon with enough force to leave craters hundreds of feet wide. Mars hurls herself away, dodging and weaving, and the impacts tremble across the moon for as far as the eye can seen.

“Jesus FUCKING CHRIST-!”

For a split-second, Mars is 14 again, piloting a robot that doesn’t feel like it belongs to her yet, fighting back against all of the lights in the sky. But Mars is so far on the back foot now that it’s not even funny, in a ship-self that she’s still adjusting to, fighting aliens who have their own gravity, with the strength to kill Mars dead.

Perhaps because this _could_ leave the two of them dead, Pluto intercedes, putting herself between Mars and Luna-Terra instead of just trying to calm Luna-Terra down. [STOP!]

_-you know I hate to see you two fight, don’t you? Why are you doing this-!?_

Luna-Terra thinks that Pluto should stop Mars, but she also doesn’t think that’s going to happen any time soon.

“is there a fight going on?” Saturn asks, and no-one is quite sure whether she’s really that single-minded or if she’s just trying to undercut the tension. “don’t tell me you’re trying to start the fight without me-!”

Well, tough, because Luna-Terra is obviously fucking busy. She can fight with Saturn later.

“but i wanna fight noooooow!” Saturn says, leaping into the fray and spilling corpuscular pink acid through the gaps in Luna-Terra’s frame.

If Saturn is that impatient, then Luna-Terra can get it over with quickly, and she really has no right to complain.

Luna-Terra lunges over Saturn, crashing into and against her with flashing peals of electroweak interaction. By all rights, Saturn should be out in one move, but it takes Luna-Terra more than a few, binding Saturn down and blasting her entirely out of her right mind.

Mars advances in the interim, racing across the lunar surface until she’s close enough to touch Luna-Terra. She is open before Luna-Terra.

She is honest before Luna-Terra, but even that hurts. How can Mars be mad at Luna-Terra? Mad at her for leaving?

“Damn it, Luna-T, I’m not mad at you!”

The original intent of the Echus Chasma was to ‘put all possibilities into correct alignment and proper order’. But instead, across days and weeks of quiet testing, and then twenty-four hours of final optimization, Mars has at least rearranged her own possibilities into a useful, comfortable chaos.

Luna-Terra lashes out at Mars again, and Pluto interposes herself again, but Mars is already well out of the way. Echus Chasma leaps from the moonscape with force greater than any of Luna-Terra’s blows, blasting out her own crater in a thunderous peal of violence. She comes to rest over the moon, falling through the same orbits that Pluto and Luna-Terra occupy.

“I used to be mad at you, because I lost you, and I was hurting! And I’m still sad, and upset! But I don’t blame you! I can’t blame you for leaving us, I won’t blame you for leaving us! I’ve never hated you! I’ll never hate you!”

Mars swerves aside as Luna-Terra flickers with beams of sterilizing sun-bleached radiation, ‘not even light’ in the same way that people always forget that light is only a sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum. Even a glancing blow to the cockpit of the Echus Chasma could shred Mars’ cells.

The funny thing is that Luna-Terra still trusts Mars to get out of the way at the last second, just like she did when they used to fight as humans.

And the truth of the thing is that Mars’ words cut deep and stinging, because Luna-Terra allowed herself to hate Mars.

When she turned rightside-in, Luna-Terra chose to try and forget Mars, because Mars wasn’t coming with her. Because even after all her talk about pulling away from Earth and carving out a home for all the lost children of space, Mars couldn’t stand the thought of the unassailable fortress that Saturn was helping them to create. Even after everything she had done to fight to stay in space, Mars was ultimately staying small and inside-out, and going back to Earth, and abandoning Luna-Terra in the process.

So Luna-Terra allowed the human pain of losing Mars — more than once, even — to blend in and fade into the backdrop of all her other human pains. Skinned knees and the rest of her body. Papercuts and the problem of other humans. Migraines and her own human history.

A human history she was more than allowed to forget, in the name of growing up and living and loving without burdens. But forgetting isn’t always closure, even when it’s the right choice to make.

“Oh, _Luna-T_ ,” Mars says, and Luna-Terra hates her pity.

Mars is awash in the sea of Luna-Terra’s emotions, every thought and feeling laid bare by their mutual gravitational turmoil. Alien emotions assault her, superimposed across her mind by her own ability to empathize. Thoughts she never would have considered or felt for herself, if no-one had ever shared them with her — %%%%%% and ######## and &&&&&.

The emotions are alien, but Mars recognizes them, anyways, like seeing her own emotions reflected in a mirror. Epithets of sorrow and betrayal and anger spoken in another language. The means are different, but the feelings are the same.

And Luna-Terra is drowning in the sea of Mars’ human emotions, her human care and concern, and she hates it — not because they’re human emotions, but because they’re loving, and Luna-Terra can’t accept that from Mars. Luna-Terra hates to have to accept that Mars cares about her, even after Mars couldn’t come with her.

It would be easier if Mars hated her.

“Luna-T,” Mars says softly, speaking into her mic like she used to whisper sweet nothings into Luna-Terra’s human ear. In a sense, it’s exactly the same, for aliens have little need for the science and Culture that distinguishes one medium from another. “Luna-T, _you poisoned me_.”

Far below them, Saturn is _still_ leaking the electrotoxins and gravitons that twisted the Gravity Well to begin with.

Luna-Terra sweeps out, all the lengths of her lithe form like edges like knives, and nearly cuts Echus Chasma in half. The Echus Chasma ducks upwards and out of the way, and missiles unspool from her limbs like fireworks on strings, all the cherry bombs that Luna-Terra used to set off on the fourth of July, swimming through the sea of probabilities to strike at Luna-Terra’s celestial body.

“You poisoned me because you thought we would all like ourselves better off poisoned — whatever, maybe you were right! But that doesn’t matter! If you were the girl you used to be, and I poisoned you, would you have gone along with it!? Would you be okay!?”

The blow strikes even deeper than all of the last, cutting into Luna-Terra’s past, and Mars hates to have to strike it. She feels loathsome, striking that far.

Luna-Terra silently erupts with needles of hardlight, individually intercepting each of Mars’ missiles and piercing through half a dozen of the Echus Chasma’s joints. Each of Mars’ bombs goes off like a sun struck through the heart, too hot to even be measured and too blinding to see.

[STOP!] Pluto beams out, stepping in again, and she lifts Saturn up with her.

Pluto does not shape meaningless attacks. Instead, she simply ‘speaks’, loud enough to blow a person away. The upper echelons of the decibel register are beyond the scope of human existence and Pluto tells truths that are painful for anyone to face, human or otherwise.

[[[Poison] [Saturn!]] [Unfair!]] [Stop!] [Dangerous!]

“i am,” Saturn murmurs. “ _very_ toxic. and dangerous, too-”

The Echus Chasma draws in closer to Luna-Terra, and before Pluto can stop her, Luna-Terra impales Mars once, twice, thrice, another dozen times upon further spears of hardlight. Before Pluto and Saturn can catch the both of them, Luna-Terra retreats with Mars, ten times as untouchable as she always used to act like she was. Luna-Terra leaves them all in the lunar dust.

But Mars still draws in closer, run-through and sinking down upon the swords and razor-needles.

“I know Saturn is the one who poisoned the Gravity Well,” Mars says. She’s babbling, really, gritting her teeth and running her mouth through the pain and the weight of Luna-Terra’s presence. “Just like I know how you feel — you hate me for fighting to leave Earth and then slinking back home — I couldn’t stand that Pluto tried to make a home in space for humans and then settled for making a home in space for aliens — I couldn’t stand that you gave up on Cradle’s Graces for being too daring and then went and did something even more fucking daring — but I love Saturn anyways — I, ngh, _fuck —_  I love her because of who she is — and I still love you guys, even if — you poisoned me and we had to part ways — I love you because of who you are — you didn’t betray what you believed in any more than I did — Pluto didn’t settle for anything — I never stopped fighting — it was never about daring or risk-”

Luna-Terra pushes Mars away, and all her hardlight blades break off in the Echus Chasma’s metal bones. Luna-Terra doesn’t want to listen or to think about what Mars is saying. It hurts too much not to flinch. Luna-Terra wants to fight Mars until she has no more energy left in her and no way to avoid listening, because Luna-Terra needs to hear Mars. Luna-Terra needs Mars to give her no choice but to listen.

So Mars opens the Echus Chasma’s heart, the hollow that used to be inert reaction chambers and arc-welding machinery, and becomes a supernova again. Fire becomes plasma and power, a never-ending detonation. Gravity is the weakest force, and also the most important, but there are stronger forces, and other important things, too.

Mars bares her heart, and her heart is a star, an explosion of overwhelming supersolar passion, far more awesome and intense than Luna-Terra’s distant white dwarf stars, the things that are only her bones. Mars eclipses Luna-Terra in this one moment, the one moment she needs. Mars sweeps Luna-Terra away, and Luna-Terra forgets all of the innumerable ways she could fight back, methods of war that have nothing to do with light or heat or radiance. Luna-Terra forgets why she's fighting back, and forgets why she's supposed to fight back.

“I’ve got you,” Mars says, gasping for breath in metal as well as flesh. “I’ve got you, Luna-T.”

Luna-Terra is a true constellation given form; not just a collection of stars, but the sketchwork and the lines and the lattice between. An untouchable pattern suspended between spheres. If Pluto is exactly the beautiful thing that Mars always saw in edited pictures of space, cosmic color and mystery made real, yawning and open and inviting, then Luna-Terra is what space is “supposed” to be, dim and colorless light stretched thin between specks of dust, empty and barren.

But Luna-Terra is beautiful, too. Really, truly beautiful. Mars missed Luna-Terra so much that the relief of this moment hurts her, too, but it's okay.

Mars touches that untouchable empty pattern, and catches Luna-Terra. Not to have her, but to hold her. To show her it’s okay. Mars touches the sky and hugs her tight, in a human machine made of steel turned into a human toy made of plastic.

 _It’s okay, Luna-T_.

“I’m so, so sorry, Luna-T,” Mars says, holding that sun-bleached and colorless space close, even through the distance of machinery and idols. Luna-Terra is sharp and taut like cosmic string, painful to hold in her fear, but Mars holds her anyways, because she wants to be held; because she needs Mars to hold her, and Mars is still a chivalric idiot. “I didn’t come here to hurt you, or to scare you like I obviously have! I didn’t come here to drag you home. I didn’t even come here to get together with you and Pluto again! Or, or, or, I-”

No, Luna-Terra finally says, almost too quiet for Mars to hear, almost too sad for Mars not to hear. And she slowly reaches out, pulling back every blade she’s embedded in the Echus Chasma’s insides.

I’m sorry, she says. I’m so _stupid_.

She couldn’t even meet one human without going back to who she used to be, running away and shooting down everyone who tried to care about her. She’s still so stupid.

“No, no, Luna-Terra, you’re not stupid at all!” Mars says. “I’M fucking sorry! I couldn’t give up my humanity, and I lost all of you for years, maybe forever-”

You haven’t lost me forever, Luna-Terra says. Not if I haven’t lost you forever, at least.

“The last thing I said to you before you left was that I hated you,” Mars sobs. “That I wanted you _dead_. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I could ever-”

That’s okay, Luna-Terra says. She kind of hated Mars, and wanted her dead, too.

“Ah-!” Mars lets out a quavering laugh. “Geez, Luna-T, you’re such a better woman than you know.”

 

* * *

 

Saturn still seeps electrotoxins and gravitons, dripping poison across the Echus Chasma every time Mars embraces her. It fizzes upon her forehead every time she presses her face to Saturn. Fighting with Luna-Terra, some of the acid leaked into Mars’ life support, fizzing through her veins.

Mars lies with the three of them in the stars, and wonders if she’s going to turn into an alien, too. If she’ll properly fall into the everse, or stay as she is, living in a hope and a prayer on a bridge of her own making.

She also wonders if it really matters, or if the distinction is just something she made up in her own head.

The four of them orbit the moon, paying attention to all the sights in the sky. Earth is distant, now, a distant point which refuses to have anything to do with their world, but there are new planets and new constellations, too; distant possibilities that _they_ can explore, from their vantage and their home in heaven. Not places that Earth won’t recognize, but places that Earth hasn’t imagined yet, not even to reject.

The fourth planet from the sun glitters like drops of blood. Luna-Terra and Saturn cradle Mars and the Echus Chasma between the two of them, waging a subtle tug-of-war that could kill Mars, at least if they really meant it all. Instead it’s more like the two of them are rocking her to sleep.

Pluto envelops the three of them in the veil of her nebula, a hug and a kiss and the weight of a blanket and probably something obscene, too, all at once, just like aliens and the most outrageous dreamers among humanity do.

[Recollection?] Pluto asks, and Mars smiles.

“Yeah. I’ll tell you guys all about what’s happened on Earth tomorrow. And then you can tell me what I missed on the moon, okay?”

[Delay?]

“Yeah, delay sounds about right,” Mars murmurs.

[Well-wishes!]

“naps are fake as shit, too,” Saturn offers. Luna-Terra whaps her, and Mars laughs.

The stars around her curve softly and sweetly, quiet and safe. Mars closes her eyes, leaden and sleepy, and waits for their gravity to wake her up.


End file.
